


All The Voices Seem To Fade When You Are Here

by ihaveacleverfandomurl



Series: All The Voices [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angsty backstories, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Gay Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Speaks Spanish, M/M, Slow Burn, Touching, also keith had an unrequited childhood crush on shiro fyi, keith and lance are both hurt lil babs, nonbinary pidge, not literally tho he just plays dad, shiro is a hot dad, the garrison trio is my SHIT, there are v gay things that happen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2018-11-04 01:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10979442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihaveacleverfandomurl/pseuds/ihaveacleverfandomurl
Summary: “Hey, um, you just broke my leg, and I’m still holding a grudge about that, but uh... You okay?”“No,” he gasps through the haze, shoving his knuckles into his mouth to muffle what might be the beginnings of sobs starting.“Uh?” Lance sounds mildly panicked.It’s so loud, so loud. He’s dying, death is happening here, and it’s killing him...Warm, slightly sweaty hands at his ears. He jumps as the screams of people hurting snap into a quiet murmur and turns to gape.Lance is staring back, utter bewilderment, a touch of fear in his gaze, his hands still pressed to either side of Keith’s head.“You...you said it was loud,” he says, as if to justify himself.Keith feels whatever anyone near him is feeling - some kind of magic he's never known why he's had. It’s overwhelming, and it’s terrifying, and it’s driven him away from people. Until he meets someone he can’t feel.Lance is blessed silence in a world of roiling emotions.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from [One Last Time by Amarante](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHFog_k6nwM) \- and Virgin Magnetic Material Remix is the best one so I linked to that ur welcome ;)  
> [My creative tumblr, where I'll be posting about updates & cosplay & art n shit](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/) Come talk to me~  
> Fic tag is "fic: atvmain"  
> -  
> ps: everyone be like "keith is an empath!!" and ok yeS true this weird semi-magic is kinda based off of my own personal experiences of dealing with being in tune with other people's emotions as an empath BUT i can assure you this shit is turned up tenfold it is mAGIC

Quiet giggles, snickers. This is what Keith wakes up to, scrubbing still-shut eyes, unwilling to open them.

“Shut up, Lance, you’re the one who wanted to come out here!”

“Ugh. This is so stupid.”

“ _You’re_ so stupid, Pidge!”

“Why do I even hang out with you two anyway? You’re children.”

“Look who’s the fourteen-year-old!”

“C’mon, Lance, can we just get in and get out? This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“I don’t know about ‘heebie-jeebies’ but it’s downright unsafe, honestly. Look at the state of that support beam. It could collapse on us at any second.”

“You’re both wimps. This place is cool.”

Keith doesn’t know why there are three hushed voices echoing through his house, but he’s ready for them. His heart is thumping in his throat as he creeps to crouch by his bedroom door, the baseball bat he keeps hidden under his bed for just this purpose cocked and ready.

He’s also ready for the rush, when it comes. Braced for it, just like he is for the intruders to pop around the corner. It crests over him like a wave, and he muffles his shaky panting as it shoves him backward into the wall.

He’s prepared for three people to fit into his head, hoping maybe whoever the hell this guy excited for exploring Keith’s home can block out Keith’s utter terror.

He gets residual fear – nerves, jumpiness, an extreme readiness to leave. He exhales through a different person’s rush. A bit of disdain, some hidden anxieties, sullen irritation – at having to hide these anxieties, at having to be here at all.

But no excitement. No appreciation. No happiness. Nothing. Not even fear.

There is no third person shoving his way into Keith’s consciousness.

He presses his back against the wall, a bead of sweat running into his eye. In his frantic state at waking at one am to find people breaking in and pressing their emotions into Keith’s head, the only possible explanation he can come up with is that one of these three isn’t real. Isn’t here. It has to be a recording, a silly voice one of the duo is doing, or something.

He’s so shaken that when the door creaks open slightly and a sneakered foot appears, he almost forgets to swing.

At the last second, he bashes at the leg, leaping to his feet with a battle cry.

Screams answer him, fear explodes, he almost wants to curl into a ball at it all. He hears pounding footsteps as someone abandons the group in a mad rush for Keith’s front door. Good.

The two left – two? _Two?_ – stare in complete horror at him. The one he’s attacking has fallen to the floor in a ball, covering his head, and behind him, a short, skinny, bespectacled kid is trying to pull him away.

Keith readies for another swing. He’s already hit the guy several times in the leg and the ribs, hard. He’ll keep hitting until they leave him alone.

“Wait, wait, please!” The skinny kid yanks on the guy on the floor once more in vain and then waves scrawny little arms desperately.

It would be pathetic if the terror emanating from them wasn’t pounding through every inch of Keith’s being in response. He freezes. He feels like he can barely move, but he knows his hands are shaking on his bat handle. He lowers it to mask the trembling and bares his teeth.

He’s had to learn to hide everything going on inside his fucked up head. He thinks he can probably act pretty well now, but anything would terrify this kid at this point.

“Get out of my house! Get out!”

“Y-your house?! Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, we’ll leave! Lance, fuck, get up!”

The boy on the floor groans, and Keith is struck anew. _He can’t feel this guy._

What is he feeling? And why the fuck...?

“Hunk!” The kid turns, scanning the area for the third member of their trio, and curses again.

“U-uh. P-pidge?”

A looming shadow peeks out from the door down the hall, and Keith’s fear spikes again. His own, this giant’s, he doesn’t know, but this is the real threat here.

“Help, Hunk!”

“Is he gonna hit me?”

“He’s gonna fucking hit Lance again if you don’t help me drag him out of here! Goddammit!”

The giant peels away from the shadows and starts slowly down the hallway. His fear suddenly envelops Keith like a cloud – so much stronger than the two in front of him that Keith feels his knees go weak. He tries to prop himself against his bedroom doorway and hold the bat at the ready at the same time.

This guy is the size of two, maybe three of Keith combined, and though he’s trembling like a leaf and Keith can feel how frightened he is, he plants himself between Keith and the other two, chewing on his lip, scared determination stamped across his face.

Keith doesn’t know why he’s so scared when he could easily snap Keith in half.

“That’s nice, Hunk, but Lance won’t get up, so I need your help. You _baby_!” Glasses Kid hits the guy in the shoulder when, yet again, he doesn’t move.

“Lance?” The giant sneaks another fearful look at Keith before turning back to also shake the guy on the floor. He only gets as far as lightly grabbing the guy’s leg before the ground-bound guy cries out.

“He’s hurt?”

“Did you hurt him?!” The giant whirls on Keith, and there’s the anger Keith was so afraid of. Roiling, exploding inside his ribs. He raises the bat again as he backs up.

“Did you hurt my best friend?”

“Just g-get out!”

The giant advances.

“Don’t make me −” Keith reaches into his waistband. He always keeps it on him.

The knife has the angry giant retreating once more, arms raised as Keith points it at his throat. But his fear is only a small blip in the wall of anger shoving against Keith now, and Keith knows that if he gets disarmed, he has no chance.

“His leg is broken.” Another wail. “Some ribs too.”

“Shit. Should you call −”

“We’re trespassing, there’s signs everywhere saying we shouldn’t be here. We can’t call the police or anything.” The kid readjusts giant glasses and levels a glare at Keith.

“Are you gonna...”

“I’m gonna get Shiro.”

“He’ll kill us!”

“Better than getting murdered by that knife-wielding emo freak over there. Stay put and look after Lance. I’ll be quick.” Glasses Kid sends Keith one more warning look before disappearing towards the front door, leaving behind silence.

The giant awkwardly looks down at his friend, then turns to look at Keith. The rage is almost completely gone, as quickly as it came, now just a simmering anger in the pit of the stomach, and a lot more nervous fear back again.

“So, uh...who are you? Why are you here?” Slowly, assessing the situation and deeming it somewhat safe enough, the giant sits down next to his friend.

Keith licks his lips, readjusting his grip on his knife to bring the giant’s eyes to it once again. “It’s none of your business. I just live here.”

The giant laughs. “This is an abandoned house, man. No way anyone lives here. It’s _gross_ , and _falling apart_ , and _creepy_ , and just...just _nasty._ ”

“Well, I live here.” Keith can feel a defensive snarl pulling up the side of his mouth, and the giant backs off, holding up his hands again. “And you guys were intruding.”

“Did you need to beat the shit out of Lance, though?” The giant’s face contorts as he looks over at his friend again. He’s still curled in a ball, hands covering his face. Keith finds himself more bothered than he should be. What is this weird, emotionless guy feeling? Why can’t Keith feel it?

“Um.”

Keith shakes himself out of it. “You shouldn’t have been here.”

“You broke his leg, dude! That’s not a reasonable response!”

“Yeah, fuck you.” A groan from the floor, and everyone stops talking.

The guy uncurls his arms from his head to push himself up on one hip, wincing. In the scant moonlight falling across the scene from one of Keith’s broken, grimy windows, he can catch a freckled brown face screwed up in pain, topped by a messy mop of dark brown hair.

He wants to shake the guy into feeling something. But he is. Keith can _see_ he is.

“Why’d you go and do that, huh?” demands the guy through gritted teeth.

“I – I told you.”

“We weren’t trying to hurt you! We thought this was an abandoned haunted house, okay? Augh!” He’d tried to sit up properly and had only caused himself more pain in the process.

“That’s not my problem! You broke into my house, wouldn’t you do the same as me?!”

Not like Keith can actually claim much normalcy. He’s never had the chance to really learn what _normal_ is in these situations. Apparently his normal isn’t actually normal at all, because the guy scoffs in disbelief.

“No! I wouldn’t break an intruder’s leg, especially if I was just some squatter in a broken down old house whose front door doesn’t even close properly!”

Keith feels the giant’s unease before he speaks. “Uh, listen, Lance, maybe don’t... It’s a lovely house, really, very uh...unique? We just need to hold out until Pidge comes back with Shiro, okay? They said they’d hurry, so just...don’t get us stabbed until then!”

Keith ignores him and stabs a finger in the freckled guy’s – Lance’s − face. “Listen here, asshole, you don’t know me. I do what it takes to survive, and if it means stabbing somebody who thought it would be funny to come into my house while I’m sleeping, then at least I’ll live to tell the tale. I don’t know how you live, but us _squatters_ , more often than not, it’s life or fucking death.”

Lance glares at him, but seems satisfyingly speechless in response.

It’s so... _disorienting_. Not knowing just what this guy feels towards him. Keith can’t shake it as he stares into puzzling blue eyes.

“Well, we promise we won’t hurt you, and we’ll get out of your way asap when our friends come pick us up, okay?” The giant hovers in the background, and Keith turns away.

“Yeah,” he mutters, twirling his knife in his hand. It’s satisfying, watching their eyes follow its path, widening slightly, feeling that spike of fear again.

 _One_ spike.

Keith wants to hit something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love freckled!Lance and nb!Pidge fight me  
> EYYYYY welcome to my first shitty contribution to the voltron fandom plz be kind to me  
> -  
> WHY HAVE I STARTED ANOTHER CHAPTERED FIC I ALREADY HAVE TWO ONGOING I H A T E MYSELF  
> I’ve been reading too many klance fics recently and had to write my own. fuck me up i love them rival space boys  
> i haven’t written in present tense in a while so gently (v gently i am fragile) point out if i fuck up plz  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

The kid Keith has realized is named Pidge finally makes a reappearance a good half an hour later. The giant – Hunk − and Lance have been talking in low voices, and every once in a while, Lance moves a little too much and winces again. Keith watches all of this from his hiding place in his bed, almost entirely covered by the patched old sheets.

“Shiro, in here! Jeez, Lance, you look green.”

“Thanks,” the boy mumbles, and Keith feels like there should be a bite in the word, but Lance has lost his fighting spirit quickly.

Another figure is detaching from the shadows at Pidge’s back, and Keith tenses, his hand back on his knife at the sudden new wash of worry, but the man who crouches at Lance’s side can’t see Keith. None of them are looking his way.

Maybe they’ll leave now. Maybe he can go back to aloneness, and silence in his head.

“I don’t know why you’re all out here at this time of night. I want you to know that I’m very disappointed in you.”

Pidge and Hunk’s hackles are up at the new man’s deep displeasure, and a sickening mix of defiance and shame whirls in Keith’s stomach. He wants to puke.

The man is older than all of them. Keith can see the reddened raised skin of a shiny old scar across the bridge of his nose, and a shock of white hair. His heart stops, and it’s actually his heart, no one else’s.

“I’m going to have to tell your parents what happened. But for now, let’s just get Lance to the hospital.”

“Yes, Shiro,” is mumbled in humiliated unison, and Keith can’t help himself, though he knows he’s going to kick himself for it later. He creeps out from underneath his sheet to the door.

Shiro startles when he catches sight of Keith, a quick jolt to his body that Keith echoes, but he can tell when slow recognition dawns before even Shiro seems to realize.

“Keith? Is that you?”

Everyone else turns to stare at Keith, shock rippling through them.

“How do you know this guy, Shiro? He’s the one who attacked Lance.” Pidge narrows their eyes.

“He – wait, what? Why? Keith?”

“This is my house,” Keith blurts out. He feels like a broken record, like a child again. This is his house. He’s said it so many times, but as Lance put it so eloquently, he’s just a squatter. Still a kid trying to pretend he has his own lonely little life in order, like he has a life _to_ order.

“Your house? _Keith_.” Shiro’s disappointed again, but it’s tinged with more sadness, more sorrow and sympathy. Directed towards _him_.

“Why do you sound sorry for him?” spits Lance. His face _is_ tinged with a sweaty, grayish green tint. “He tried to kill me!”

“I −” Shiro looks at Keith, asking. Keith knows what he wants − he wants to tell this group that Keith doesn’t know the all-too-revealing bit of Keith’s life story that Shiro holds in his hands, a gem of information these trespassers haven’t earned. Keith shakes his head vigorously, and Shiro stutters to a stop.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” he finally says. Everyone had watched Keith silence him, and now irritation and suspicion flows around Keith’s ankles, wrapping tendrils up his legs.

_Please, go. Just go._

“But he’s coming with us.”

Everyone – Keith included – stares at Shiro, struck dumb.

“What?”

“You’re coming with us,” Shiro repeats, carefully hoisting Lance into his arms.

“No,” Keith protests, but before the word leaves his mouth, he knows it’s hopeless. Shiro is thoroughly immovable on this issue. He’s stuck.

The outrage hurts his head.

“He hurt Lance, though!” Hunk objects.

“He could still hurt _us_!” Pidge is quick to join in.

“Your weapons, Keith.”

Keith sighs and grabs the bat from where it’s fallen to the ground. He almost misses Lance’s eyes following the heavy, worn wood. Keith couldn’t be sure, but a glimmer of renewed fear seems to hide in his gaze.

Forcefully, visibly, he tosses it back under the bed.

“Knife.” The taller man holds out a hand, still supporting the drooping boy in his arms.

“How did you know he −” Lance begins, staring up at Shiro, who shakes his head reproachfully.

“You know his frickin’ name, I guess,” the boy mumbles, and once more, his eyes snap to Keith’s hands as he approaches, the handle of his knife outstretched to Shiro.

He hears Lance exhale shakily as the knife passes into Shiro’s possession, and Keith almost wins the fight against his nerves as it leaves his hand.

He loses. He feels naked when he’s unarmed. He feels like his own fear could swallow him up whole. His last defense, gone.

Shiro’s grateful, though, Keith doesn’t need the glance sent his way to know that, and woozy relief echoes around the room.

Keith looks at Lance. He’s still sickly pale. His hair is matted to his forehead in sweat, and his breath has become short, labored as his head lolls against Shiro’s shoulder. His legs dangle over Shiro’s elbow, one even more limp than the other, and his eyebrows jump a little with each gasp. His eyes are screwed shut.

Is he relieved, too? Is he angry his attacker has been invited to follow him around? Is terror still thrumming through his nerves?

“We gotta go.” Pidge stands up on their tiptoes to peer into Lance’s face. “He doesn’t look good.”

“No shit,” Lance manages to gasp. “I could have told you that a while ago.”

“Save your breath for breathing,” the kid advises him, adjusting their glasses, a smirk curling across their face when Lance weakly flips them off as Shiro turns for the door. 

* * *

 

The trip in Shiro’s sleek black car is quiet. Every jolt and turn jostles Lance, spread out across their laps in the back. And despite the fun poked earlier, even if Keith can’t feel Lance, he can feel everyone else’s wincing in sympathy as the boy grinds his teeth together.

Shiro, evidently, can’t bear it any more than the rest of them, and finally breaks the silence in a strained tone. “So what exactly were you all doing there anyway? Last I heard, you were sleeping over at Hunk’s.”

“It’s Lance’s fault,” Pidge volunteers immediately.

“Excuse −”

“He said he knew a cool haunted place to visit and he took us there,” affirms Hunk. “I didn’t want to.”

“Neither did I.” Pidge nods.

“Sure, blame it on the easy target,” wheezes Lance faintly. “Not like I can defend myself right now.”

“Well, if you two were so set against it, maybe you should have stopped the whole thing from happening,” chides Shiro, more disapproving energy emanating from him in waves.

Again, Pidge and Hunk mutter ashamed apologies.

“Yeah, that’s right. You’re in trouble right along with me!”

“ _Lance_.” Shiro sends a warning glance over his shoulder.

“It wasn’t even haunted, you dingbat, it was Keith living there.” Pidge glares down at the head in their lap as Keith jumps. “Serves you right for believing stupid school rumors.”

Hunk chuckles as he, too, looks down at his friend. “Now Lance can say he was beat up by a ghost. No one needs to know it was Keith, huh, buddy?”

They use his name so casually. He feels choked. He needs to get out of the car. There are too many people, and they know his name, they know where he lives, they know where he hides his weapons, hell, Shiro still has his knife. And they’re all _feeling_ too much.

“Hey.” Shiro meets his eyes in the rearview mirror as the other three laugh together, their own little bubble of close-knit mirth. Keith fights the urge to reach for his seatbelt and the lock and just jump out, regardless of how fast they’re going, as he holds Shiro’s gaze. He tries to steady himself on that quiet, calm tone. “It’ll be okay.”

It isn’t, though. 

* * *

 

The emergency room is too much. Keith feels like he’s imploding. He retreats to a corner, trying to curl into a ball and block it all out. Panic, all-encompassing terror, claws its way up his throat as he rocks in his sticky plastic chair, pressing his forehead to his knees.

His heart is breaking, his mind is racing, he feels sick sick sick –

“Dude.”

Shiro’s taken Pidge and Hunk with him to the desk to check in. Keith hadn’t noticed when Lance had been deposited next to him, but now, an uncertain voice reaches his ears.

“Hey, um, you just broke my leg, and I’m still holding a grudge about that, but uh... You okay?”

“No,” he gasps through the haze, shoving his knuckles into his mouth to muffle what might be the beginnings of sobs starting.

“Uh?” Lance sounds mildly panicked.

It’s so loud, so loud. He’s dying, death is happening here, and it’s killing him...

Warm, slightly sweaty hands at his ears. He jumps as the screams of people hurting snap into a quiet murmur and turns to gape.

Lance is staring back, utter bewilderment, a touch of fear in his gaze, his hands still pressed to either side of Keith’s head.

“You...you said it was loud,” he says, as if to justify himself.

Keith can’t speak.

“S-sorry.” Lance slowly pulls back, and there it is again, the crash of it all into him.

“No!” Keith wraps his fingers around Lance’s to shove them right back where they had been.

Quiet. In this crowded room. He stares at Lance in this newfound quiet, half absently, half curiously. Why? How?

Lance, for his part, looks freaked.

Keith supposes he can’t blame him. Even from his not-really-knowing-normal angle, Keith knows that _this isn’t normal_. But he just needs to enjoy this, for a minute... He closes his eyes...

“Lance, they’re ready for you.”

Lance’s hands tug from his and Keith looks up in time to see Shiro helping Lance into a wheelchair, and Pidge and Hunk regarding him weirdly. They’re uneasy, nervous, and beyond them, again, a million others. Keith inhales and slams his spine into the back of his seat, his head falling backwards as he tries to temper it all with physical pain.

Lance looks back at him one last time, eyes wide, as Shiro wheels him away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *casually drops as vague an intro to Keith & Shiro’s relationship as the actual show does lol*  
> tbh i’ve never broken a bone & i did some research bc i research (minimally) for my fanfics but idrk what i’m doing here  
> although if it’s way too overdramatic let’s be honest it would be the most ic thing for lance to be a drama queen and also for keith to have accidentally gone fuckin apeshit with his bat so just don’t worry abt it  
> (one thing i do know is nobody gets service that quick in the er lol but it’s fictioooooooon~)


	3. Chapter 3

They don’t ask, but he knows their confused, twisting curiosity. Hunk sneaks a few glances at him, and Pidge just plain stares from underneath their eyelashes.

He can feel sour bile in the back of his throat, seeping through his mouth.

“Keith?”

He looks up. Hunk has finally turned his way, awkward as he picks at his fingernails. “So, Shiro’s girlfriend is coming to pick us up. And Shiro wants you to stay with him, I guess?”

“At my house,” Pidge notes sourly. Their bitterness is laced with a good-natured fondness. “Because Shiro just picks up strays no matter whose house he’s staying at.”

“Well, we wouldn’t all have met if he hadn’t made friends with Matt!”

“You saying my brother is a stray?” A single eyebrow goes up, and Hunk backpedals as Keith’s fingernails dig into old scars in his palms – he hasn’t opened them up in years, he knows to avoid places like this –

“Well, uh, no! Uh, Keith!” Maybe this is good, a relieving distraction to play _Hunk’s_ distraction, because Keith thinks he might be starting to break again. “What’s wrong?”

“You look _terrible_ ,” Pidge confides. “Guilt finally getting to you now that we’re here?”

It’s not enough.

“I need out!” He shoots to his feet, crossing the room in five strides, and practically sprints directly into the glass of the automatic doors as they open too slowly.

He feels a flash of shock, and (surprising) worry from the consecutively tiny and very large pair as the doors slide shut behind him.

Space helps, but he thinks he could feel the black cloud of death hanging over this place from a mile out. He leans against the wall and slides down, to where he can bury his face against his knees and try to breathe it out.

He should leave.

“Are you all right?”

Concern in a lilting, accented voice. He’d been so distracted, he hadn’t noticed this woman’s worry approaching until she was crouching in front of him. The sound of the doors _swooshing_ open again save him from having to respond.

“Keith! Hang on, we −”

“Allura!”

“Pidge, Hunk! What’s happened?”

Keith scrunches himself down farther as they babble over each other, Pidge and Hunk hurrying to explain to this newcomer the last few hours.

There’s a few moments of silence when they finish, then her voice drops. “So...he was the one who hurt Lance?”

He can still hear her, even as panic he’s failed to banish whirls through his head.

“And Shiro wants us to...?”

Hunk and Pidge don’t respond, but a rustle of fabric makes Keith suspect one of them shrugged.

She feels wary, and he expects the light fingers on his shoulder. “Erm...Keith?”

He twists away.

“There’s something wrong with him.” Pidge steps closer too, and he swallows back...something, because there it is again – worry washes over him again, briefly, gone as quick as it came, but that had come from Pidge and Hunk both. Worry _for_ him, not _about_ him. Even though he was who he was, and he’d done what he’d done to them.

“Well, I need to find Shiro. We should go.”

Go. Leave this place. Yes, he can do that.

Keith stands up so abruptly he almost falls over, and multiple hands have to steady him.

His eyes land on the new woman’s giant, silvery curls looped into a messy bun, gleaming as they catch the artificial lights. She’s staring at him like the others, flawless brown skin offset nicely by her fluffy pink bathrobe.

This is Shiro’s girlfriend, no doubt. She could easily be considered gorgeous – if Keith was into, well, boobs.

Keith had thought Shiro was gorgeous when they’d met, too. And perhaps, as young as he’d been, he’d maybe thought himself a little bit in love with Shiro.

If it had to be someone else that Shiro was into, maybe it was best it was this woman. Together, she and Shiro probably made quite a pair.

“Keith?” she repeats, and he knows she doesn’t trust him, doesn’t understand him, doesn’t think Shiro should be picking up some weird guy who lives in a condemned house and hits people with old baseball bats. She’s suspicious, anxious, nervous. But she still holds out her hand to him.

He looks down at it, then over at Pidge and Hunk.

“This is Allura,” Pidge says. Their bottom lip is worrying between their teeth as they stare between Keith and the new woman.

“She’s nice?” Hunk adds nervously.

“If you don’t hit on her like an asshole.” Pidge smirks. “Like a Lance-shaped asshole.”

“You beat me to putting him in the hospital first, I guess.” It’s a joke, but one said with narrowed eyes. A lot is riding on how Keith responds to Allura’s words, because despite what she says, she cares about Lance − as much as all the others do. He knows.

He puts his hand in hers.

“Good.” Her fingers tighten firmly around his and suddenly she’s tugging him back through the doors. “Let’s go.” 

* * *

 

“Allura! Thank god.” Shiro’s relief is palpable, even through the fog of everything in this building. Keith doesn’t realize he’s still clutching Allura’s hand until she tugs on the fingers he has a death grip on. He lets go so that she can hug Shiro, then give him a quick peck.

Pidge makes puking noises. They don’t mean it. Hunk shoves Pidge, smiling. He thinks it’s cute.

Keith wraps his hands around the back of his neck and inhales, exhales as they converse in low voices.

They’re in the hall, further into the depths of the building, outside a room – Lance is inside, Keith guesses, because there are several professionally calm minds behind the door, but no one touched with panic or pain.

No one in _that_ room, anyway. There are plenty others around.

He feels extra sensitive, and of course _now_ would be the time his head – or wherever this whole thing came from – chose to send out longer probing fingers in every direction, to play radio antenna for every person in the place.

Shiro had been too distracted in the waiting room to notice, but now, his attention is suddenly directed at Keith. “Hey. Hey, hey, Keith.” His hand is cupping Keith’s cheek, and Keith tries to steady shaking breaths and meet his gaze.

“Get him out of here. Take them all home.” Shiro turns to Allura. “I’ll wait with Lance, all right?”

“Hang on, if everyone is going to Pidge’s, I’m coming too!” Hunk declares.

Shiro sighs. “Let your parents know, or they’ll wake up to find you all gone, and god knows they have enough to worry about with your new sister.”

Shiro looks back at Keith.

He’s trying to keep it together, really, and he thinks he’s doing a pretty admirable job of at least faking it, but the man sees right through him.

“Go calm down, okay? Get some sleep.” He ruffles Keith’s hair. Keith ducks away; he doesn’t like people messing with his hair, but Shiro still smiles before reaching to give Allura one last hug. He squeezes Hunk’s shoulder and reaches to give Pidge the same treatment as Keith, but they knock his hand away, glaring.

He raises a reproving eyebrow, grinning, and they roll their eyes and finally let him place his hand on top of their head for a moment.

“See you guys in the morning.” 

* * *

 

The drive back is quiet. Hunk and Pidge have fallen into tired worry now that the situation (and the time) has sunk in, and Allura’s state isn’t much better. She jumps at everything – a bird that flies in front of the windshield, the slight honk from behind when she doesn’t respond immediately at a green light, even the crunch of gravel as she finally pulls into a driveway of a respectable small family home in her (surprisingly large and fancy) pink car.

Pidge is snoozing against Hunk’s shoulder, drool staining the arm of his yellow shirt, as they come to a stop. He’s dozing too, but blinks awake as Allura turns off the car.

Keith watches as sleepily, Hunk gathers his still out-cold tiny friend up and stumbles out of the vehicle.

What would it be like, he wonders, to have friends like that? People he could trust to take care of him, people that wouldn’t turn on him at the drop of a hat.

He drifts after them all, silent, as Allura reaches under the doormat to get a key to unlock the door. He knows where it is, now. He lives in an abandoned house, but he would never do something like use a hidden key in front of a stranger. There are too many people in the world who would take advantage of something like that.

He’s staying in the house already, he supposes. But still.

“Why don’t you, um...here, I think you can sleep on the couch.” Allura’s whisper is quiet as Hunk heads on up the stairs and down the hallway at the top, Pidge still limply curled over his shoulder. He turns into a room and shuts the door. “I...I think there are blankets in the ottoman?”

She doesn’t move as Keith slowly makes his way into the living room, stripping off his jacket. He turns to stare at her.

“I’m waiting for Shiro. Don’t mind me. I’ll just...sit here. Go sleep.”

Her frenzied mind is too distracting for sleep. Not that he can tell her that.

Hunk comes back out to dig a sleeping bag out of the hallway closet and step back into Pidge’s room as Keith pretends to prepare for bed. Really, he’s going to fake sleep until Shiro comes in and everyone is safely back in their beds. Then he can leave.

He folds his jacket over the arm of the couch – easy access – and drops his shoes by the jacket. Everything else he leaves on as he pulls a blanket he found over himself, turning into the couch’s embrace. He can tell if anyone starts to sneak up on him, so hiding his face is no big deal. The better to fake sleep.

Allura’s mind calms after a while. Hunk has long since fallen asleep. No one else is awake, but Keith can count dreaming minds – there are seven people in this house, counting him. Shiro will make eight. That’s way too many.

He almost sleeps, though, even as on-edge as he is, Shiro takes so long. Allura’s sleeping against the entryway wall when the purr of the car and the rumble of gravel shocks Keith entirely into consciousness from the half-asleep state he’s fallen into.

Shiro takes a while to get to the door – he’s worried, careful. Allura doesn’t wake up until the lock clicks and it starts creaking open, then she jumps up, alert, a little burst of happiness, then surprise.

“Oh! Oh, he’s – why is he here?”

“Well, everyone else is already here, so I figured −”

Lance. Keith swallows.

“He was worried his mother would kill him if he turned up in the middle of the night all beat up,” Shiro chuckles quietly as they shuffle through the door – a small herd of elephants.

“All right, listen, my mama is a little crazy, but I can still handle her, I just −”

“That’s not what you were saying when you were begging me not to take you home, Lance.”

“ _Shiro,_ c’mon...”

“I’m afraid you lost your chance to impress me when I heard you got here by breaking into an abandoned house, Lance.” Allura and Shiro are both brimming with amusement by now, holding back laughter at the third member of their party – still empty, presenceless, not even there. Keith ever-so-slowly shifts, turns over to peer through eyelashes at them all.

There he is – propped up on crutches, leg wrapped up in plaster, leaning against Shiro.

Keith thinks he will regret this, leaving behind such a puzzle. A cure to this condition of his, a person able to block it all out. But it’s for the best. He doesn’t need a barricade against people when there are none around at all.

They’ve been talking, but he suddenly realizes what they’ve been talking about. Shiro is giving Lance his and Allura’s bed for the night.

“There are some cots in the closet upstairs, I think, we can sleep in here.”

They start to move down the hallway, towards Shiro and Allura’s room, and Keith realizes he has to move _now_.

The second the door closes, he springs up. Even as he jumps to his feet, he knows he’s made a mistake. Somebody stayed behind – started to get the cots, leaving Allura to help Lance into his room.

Shiro stands on the stairs, his white hair catching the slightest glimmer of moonlight, his eyes wide. As Keith freezes, they stare at each other.

Finally, Shiro’s hand on the banister relaxes as he sighs. “Keith, why don’t you sit back down? We should talk.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> space dad lectures 101, how to freak out your bf before he becomes your bf, angsty teenagers

Talking is bad. Talking means giving up his own thoughts, his own feelings, his own secrets. Keith knows everyone else’s, but he’ll be damned if he gives up his.

“Please stay, Keith. Just for now.” Shiro turns back, padding down the stairs. He comes to stand in front of Keith. “I never thought we’d see you again. I don’t want you to disappear. Please.”

Even if Keith wasn’t basically some kind of mind reader, Shiro’s sincerity is obvious. It pours from him, his eyes searching Keith’s, so attuned, so careful.

He knows when Allura appears, the door creaks, her weariness permeates, and the slightest flick of Shiro’s gaze to some spot behind Keith. She stops when she sees them both, confused, and Shiro motions upstairs. “Give us a minute?”

She goes, eyeing them both, and disappears.

And now, all his attention is back on Keith again. Keith shifts, uncomfortable at his heavy gaze.

“Please.” Once more, softer now, not an almost command like the others, truly pleading.

Keith sits.

Shiro sits on the ottoman opposite him, a small, grateful smile curving his lips. “Thank you.”

Keith shrugs a shoulder and stares at his feet.

“So...you were living in that place, weren’t you?”

And in with the questions. Keith presses his lips together and nods once.

“Why? You know we would have looked after you, Keith.”

“You were leaving. You and Matt had college.” _And you were going to find out everything, soon enough. And I couldn’t have you leave me, too._ He can’t say that. But he feels the stab he’s made at Shiro’s heart as if it’s his own.

“We would have found a way. Look at me.”

He doesn’t need to, but he does. It hurts, what he’s said to Shiro.

This is why he doesn’t want this. Friendships. He hurts them, and then he hurts himself.

“We wouldn’t have left you alone.”

“You had other things to worry about. I handled myself. I can do it. I’m fine.”

Shiro’s forehead creases further. Keith’s stomach aches. “You can’t call living in a derelict, condemned building handling yourself. How were you eating, how were you doing...anything?”

“I was fine,” he finally snaps, standing up. And it’s there again, a twinge in his chest as Shiro draws back a little under his tone, eyebrows drawing together.

“All right.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you,” he growls.

“All right.”

“I don’t want to talk!” he snarls, his hands fists now.

“All right.” Shiro’s eyebrows are still knitted together, but otherwise, his face is smooth. He’s smooth everywhere, his emotions tamped down, eerily calm. Keith hates it. It’s fake, it’s handling the angry child, it’s letting him have his inane temper tantrum, waiting for him to calm down.

“Screw you!” explodes from him, and he whirls to tug on his boots and seize his jacket from the couch – he’s going to storm out the door and run, get out of here, away from Shiro, away from them all.

“Keith.”

He stops, grinding his teeth together, his jacket balled up in his hands. Shiro tosses Keith’s knife onto the couch next to him.

“We don’t have to talk. Just stay in the house for tonight, okay? That’s all I ask.” 

* * *

 

He doesn’t leave. He can’t, not when Shiro asked like that, because Keith owes him, for all those years ago, for disappearing on him once already.

He prowls, though; he can’t sleep. He walks the house restlessly in quiet, sock-muffled feet, as Shiro and Allura sleep in the living room where he’s supposed to be.

He paces the length of the hallways, measures the height of the staircase, counts the tiles on the kitchen floor as he steps across them, once, twice, three times.

The windows are letting in slate gray light when he finally comes to a dead stop − in front of the room at the end of the first floor hall. It feels empty. He knows better.

He’s always been good at sneaking. He knows his way around even the creakiest of houses, knows where to tread, where to tiptoe, where to jump and land on the balls of his feet.

He eases the door open like it’s newly greased. He’s a light sleeper, but no one else is this house is. Especially not the person in this room – snoring like he’s aiming to give a freight train a run for its money.

Keith sighs and doesn’t bother to try masking the click of the knob behind him. The room is dark, blinds drawn, only the slightest bit of light peeking through. The slivers of past-dawn that make it in fall on the end of the bed, highlighting a lump of a body.

There’s the overly large foot, on top of probably more than one pillow, underneath the covers. The rest of Lance is curled in a ball, covers tucked up completely around him, pulled over his head so that Keith can only just make out his face poking out in the darkness − like he’s retreated into their depths for warmth.

It is pretty cold in this house. Not as cold as where Keith usually sleeps.

He pads closer, lightly, peering down at the only bit of Lance he can see.

He didn’t really mean to come in here. It’s kind of weird of him to just creep into Lance’s room. But the quiet is soothing. There are people outside dreaming fuzzy dreams that crackle across his consciousness like static, but the static is almost muffled within the four walls of this room.

There’s nothing from the boy on the bed. Keith slides down the wall next to the bed, watching him through half-open eyes. He chews back a low laugh as Lance mumbles something about a “space mall” and wrinkles his nose, smacking his lips before returning to a gentle, rumbling snore.

He’d thought Lance’s quiet unnerving before, but now, it almost intrigues him, and it certainly calms him after this day full of chatter.

He doesn’t know he’s dropping off until he opens his eyes to bright midmorning light and a screech. 

* * *

 

“What what _what are you doing in my room?_ OW, FUCK!”

Lance is curled up on himself, clutching his leg, an arm around his ribs, face screwed up in pain. Keith, for his part, is gripping the back of his head where he’d slammed it into the wall in surprise, wincing.

“What are you doing here?” Lance pants, staring at Keith with wide eyes. “The hell?”

“I just...”

“Are you here to finish me off? _¡Dios mío!_ ” Lance’s voice is climbing in volume again...and there are people outside the room, who are about to start taking notice, and asking more questions than Keith is ready for. “I thought we had some sort of weird bonding thing, what happened to −”

“No, no no!” Keith launches himself forward to press his hands over the boy’s mouth, about to explain – well, to find something to explain why he’d wandered in here and just...fallen asleep when –

It’s like the sudden suck of a vacuum in space – everything is gone. Shiro, Allura, Pidge and Hunk, silent. The voices of the mystery house occupants vanish too.

Keith gawks at Lance, whose eyes are the size of dinner plates under Keith’s hands.

Is it just....he just has to touch Lance? For it to all...go away? He’d thought it was covering his ears, but no, simply –

Narrowing his eyes, Keith lets go, then grabs Lance’s shoulder – covered by his shirt.

It’s back.

Lance squawks, and Keith covers his mouth again, and they’re gone again.

They stare at each other. Slowly, Lance’s eyebrows, that have been hovering near his hairline, travel downwards, forming into a withering glare. He grabs Keith’s hand and tugs it away from his mouth. “What the fuck, dude?”

“I...” Keith stares down at his hand in Lance’s. Still, quiet.

“You have some serious explaining to do if you don’t want me to start screaming for someone to get in here.”

“No, don’t −” Desperately, Keith looks up to find Lance eyeing him with an expression he can’t make heads nor tails of. It’s nothing short of flabbergasting to be completely unable to understand what another person is feeling, and Keith can feel his jaw slacken a little.

“So you don’t want them coming in, huh? What’s going on?!”

Keith is just a stammering mess, shocked into wordlessness. Lance snaps his fingers in front of Keith’s face. “Focus. Why are you even here?”

He can answer that. He thinks. He tries to force his mind clear. It’s not actually that hard. Lance is still gripping his hand, emptying the background. “Shiro made me stay.”

Lance’s eye twitches. “Ah, yes. And how exactly do you two know each other?”

It almost sounds like...jealousy or something, if Keith didn’t know any better.

“He...he looked after me when I was younger.”

“Well, isn’t that nice. Shiro, dadding everybody.” Lance lets go of Keith to rake a hand through his hair, irritation stamped across his face.

Without thinking, Keith lunges for his hand again, and Lance yanks it out of reach, staring.

Keith stiffens, because he’s fucked up big time now.

“All right, here’s a question. Why do you keep on freaking out like that?”

Keith doesn’t speak.

“You keep on wanting...What do you want? You want to...do you keep trying to touch me?”

He swallows.

“Come on, don’t look like I’m threatening to kill your puppy or something. Hey!”

Lance is seizing his wrist as Keith tries to push himself off the bed, flee the scene. Except that’s the moment when Shiro chooses to open the door to blink at them both. Lance lets go of his wrist.

“Keith,” Shiro finally says, cracking a smile. “Glad you’re here. Did you come to check up on our patient?”

He’d thought Keith had gone, as evidenced by the relief coursing through him now.

“Yeah,” Keith mumbles, and his gaze flickers to Lance. What does he think of that, that blatant lie?

Lance’s jaw is clenched as he turns a fierce look from Shiro to Keith. Clearly, he’s seething. Why, exactly, Keith can’t be precisely sure, but it’s probably something to do with the fact that Keith is getting away without answering him.

Keith steps away from him, toward Shiro, who pats him on the shoulder in warm greeting. “Breakfast is out for you sleepyheads if you want to join the world of the living.”

“Oh, right, leave. I’m not done talking to you, Keith! We’re going to finish this conversation eventually!”

Lance’s angry tone rings out and Shiro’s eyebrows rise as he looks between the two. Keith chews on his lip and doesn’t look back as he steps out of the room.

It’s brighter than he thought, later. Keith doesn’t sleep this late. There’s too much to do at home in the mornings.

“Oh, we thought you’d run off.” Pidge grins at him from where they’re lounging at the dining room table, leisurely digging their way through a giant stack of syrup-smothered pancakes.

His stomach growls then, loudly, and their grin gets wider. “Food, then?”

“Oh, hey, Keith.” Hunk looks up from his own plate as he walks in, a bright pink apron much too small for him hanging from his front as he smiles – a wide, sincere one. “Do you want pancakes? Waffles? Eggs? I can make you anything.”

He can’t remember the last time he had anything like that. His mouth waters.

“All of them?” Hunk suggests after a pause, and Keith nods reverently.

“Hungry, huh? A man after my own heart.”

A snort from behind Keith, and Lance shoves past on his crutches. “Cool we’re all buddy-buddy.”

“Lance!” Hunk nearly drops his plate in his hurry to envelop his friend in a bear hug, pauses, carefully sets the food down, and then rushes at the other boy.

“Ahhhhhh watch the ribs −” Lance groans, and Hunk grimaces, loosening his grip, but still not letting go.

“Sorry, sorry!”

“You dorks.” Pidge has come around the table to throw themself into the hug too, teeth bared wide in a bright joy – two of the trio are bursting with it.

Lance’s arm winds around their shoulder as Hunk tugs them up off the ground too, and Keith watches.

When the two with their feet dangling in the air are carefully returned to the ground, everyone’s smiling, but Keith’s eyes are drawn to Lance. He looks happy, so much happier than he was only a few moments ago, when Keith apparently set him off. His eyes crinkle and his cheeks dimple as he play-punches Pidge in the shoulder and puts up with another half-tearful tight squeeze of a hug from Hunk.

Keith had never thought problems could be solved with hugs. But it wasn’t like he would know.

Shiro’s presence is at Keith’s back now, watching the three fondly, and there’s another person, sidling up at Shiro’s side.

“Lance!”

Keith turns, because he remembers that voice, too, and even as Lance starts to laugh a greeting, Matt’s eyes flicker down to Keith and he gapes.

“K-Keith!”

Keith doesn’t know why he never put it together their first meeting – Pidge is the spitting image of Matt, just pint-sized. And while Shiro certainly played the lead in those wonderful, wonderful few months of being actually _cared for_ , Matt had been there too, tucking in heavy quilts around Keith’s shoulders and handing him mugs of hot cocoa.

So when Matt stumbles forward, arms outstretched, Keith lets the hug happen, unsure of where to put his arms – he leaves them awkwardly at his sides. Everyone else in the kitchen seems fine with it – Shiro’s as happy watching this hug as the first, and Pidge and Hunk, though confused, are cautiously pleased as well as Matt mutters, “God, it’s good to see you, kid.”

A scoff, though, catches Keith’s attention as Matt raises a hand to briefly clutch the back of Keith’s head before releasing him, and Keith just catches Lance turning away before the kitchen is overwhelmed with chatter again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cries* i love me my garrison trio sm  
> Tbh writing this chapter and the last? I love like everybody in this show so much?? It’s just been hitting me extra hard lately like when i first got into this fandom i was like eh it’s ok but now i’m so attached...  
> can’t fuckin wait to cosplay from volton (even tho it’s overdone af)


	5. Chapter 5

Everyone’s happy around the table as food is doled out, not a note of discord in the delight blanketing the room. Allura has joined them, sleepy and cuddly, her head resting on Shiro’s shoulder as he hands her the plate of pancakes.

Pidge and Matt’s parents have left for work, confusion and slight unease prompting a brief conference with Matt and Shiro away from the group before they went, one that Keith couldn’t hear, but the two men had exchanged concerned looks as the door closed behind the Holt parents. They’ve left their disquiet by the entry, however, and are digging into Hunk’s feast as excitedly as anyone.

But a single sour look is being leveled at the top of Keith’s head from across the table. He knows because he’s glanced up through his bangs to catch a glimpse of blue eyes narrowed, mouth twisted in a thin line − otherwise, he wouldn’t know. It’s weird to feel strong emotions directed Keith’s way through only the weight of a gaze.

Matt leaves after a bit for his own shift at work, sending Keith a strange burst of anxiety as he hugs him tight one more time with a misleading smile. Shiro, too, leaning over to whisper in Hunk’s ear. Worrying.

Hunk glances at Keith, who pretends to not be looking, instead shoving the remains of the first properly warm – never mind actually prepared – meal he’s had in a while around his plate. He knows it’s his time to go, now. He’s honored Shiro’s request of staying the night, he let them shower him in generosity, it’s time to come back down to the real world.

Hunk shakes his head regretfully in Keith’s periphery, and Shiro presses his lips together. Dread pricks at his stomach, heavy like lead. Keith stands up, fighting the weight Shiro has given him.

Shiro’s head turns before anyone else’s, but soon they’re all looking at him. Keith’s eyes fall on Lance, who’s dropped the glare for a moment as he watches like all the others, lips parted in an enigmatic face.

“Thank you,” Keith mumbles, dipping his head at them all. “Sorry.” It’s kind of directed at everyone, but mostly at the boy across the table. A little is to himself. He’s sorry he’s like this. He’s angry he’s like this. He should go.

He’s pulling on his jacket, halfway to the door in a cloud of bewildered apprehension, when Shiro calls, “Keith, wait.”

He turns back to watch the man reach to grab Lance by the shoulder and pull him in to murmur words Keith can’t hear. Lance’s face contorts, a mess of disbelief and fury and maybe fear, maybe betrayal, Keith can’t say, but Lance’s “what?!” is only an enraged stage whisper − clear enough.

Shiro bows his head and says more in a too-quiet voice, eyes searching Lance’s, but Lance can’t hold his gaze, scowling to the side. Finally, he tugs his arm from Shiro’s grip, chewing out a single word that sounds like “fine.”

Relief courses through Shiro, a rope of nerves unraveling in Keith’s core, as the man jogs to catch up to Keith by the door. “Let me drive you,” is all he says, and Keith is as surprised as the faces peering at them from the kitchen are – the last glimpse he’ll have of them.

The door closes behind them both on Lance’s expression: unsure, wary, laced with anger.

* * *

 

“You’re going back?” Shiro simply asks as he clicks his seatbelt into place, Keith nods, and Shiro backs out.

The drive is quiet. Neither of them fiddle with the radio, and there’s no one else in the car to chatter, or snore, or just breathe. Shiro’s doing the whole “blank slate” of emotions again, which Keith thinks is impressive. It isn’t like he knows Keith’s secret, not really, but he knows enough, Keith guesses, to hide it all.

Still, he doubts Shiro approves of this. He never did. But he also never drove Keith away from shelter, and warmth, and food willingly before.

Shoving back a sigh, Keith presses his forehead against the cool glass of the window and closes his eyes. After a moment, he rolls it down an inch, gauging Shiro subconsciously. There’s no real reaction, so Keith lets it continue its slide downwards until he can let his head out the opening.

If he had a vehicle, he’d want something where he could feel the wind of his speed against him, beating his face, whipping at his hair. Maybe a motorcycle. That sounds nice. A red one.

A pipe dream. He still smiles into the slipstream of the car as he slips back inside and closes the wish outside with the gentle seal of the window shutting.

Shiro doesn’t comment. But Keith feels a twinge of bittersweet regret surface in his chest.

He doesn’t know whose it is. 

* * *

 

Shiro parks on the road. Keith’s “house” is blocked off by old fences, and faded caution tape, and broken glass and garbage. Keith unfastens his seatbelt.

They sit for a minute in silence, and something swells within Shiro, and he turns to Keith, who says, “No.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”

“I can’t.”

“Keith. The Holts can’t keep you right now. Allura and I are just Matt’s guests until we can find our own place, but as it is, their house is full.”

“O-oh.” He’s right, Keith wasn’t expecting this. He doesn’t know where Shiro is going with this.

“Hunk’s family is busy with their new baby girl, he doesn’t think they can take you either.”

“Right.” Keith’s heart is sinking. He wants to get out of the car. He didn’t know being rejected by so many people he wasn’t even actually asking for help from would be so painful.

“But Lance says his family will.”

“What? No, no, no.” _Yes!_ the rest of him screams, because it’s _Lance_ , and spending more time in his presence would be wonderfully, peacefully mind-numbing, but he can’t do that, because that’s the quickest route to spilling his secrets.

Besides –

“Lance hates me!”

“Lance doesn’t hate you.”

“I broke his _leg_.”

“He doesn’t.”

There had been times when Keith almost thought Lance didn’t hate him. For some reason. The waiting room of the ER, weird moments after waking up that morning. But then it was back with a vengeance.

“He said that he would let you stay for now. And then, when I can get a place, you can move in with me and Allura. We can find you a job, maybe get you into school. You can have a future.”

Call him dramatic, but Keith doesn’t think that’s realistic for someone like him.

“You could take online classes. Get some kind of work from home. I know people are hard for you, but nothing’s impossible, Keith.” So gentle, so caring.

Fuck, Keith wants it.

“Will you give it a chance? Until you move in with me?”

He just has to sit back in his seat, refasten his seatbelt, and take it.

 _Click._

* * *

 

The silence in the car takes on a new quality with a third person thrown into the mix. A third person who appears to be fuming, if Keith’s occasional glances in the rearview mirror are any indication.

Keith was right, and Shiro was wrong. Lance does hate him, regardless of the invite Shiro had forced him to extend to Keith.

The house they pull up to is big and brightly painted with yellows and oranges, with the look of a well-used family home. Some toys – a giant rubber ball patched and worn, an abandoned small bicycle lying pathetically on its side, a kinked-up hula hoop – lie scattered about the yard. Keith catches a glimpse of a small brown head the same shade as Lance ducking into the house as Shiro parks.

A moment later, a small woman emerges. Her own brown hair is pulled up in a messy bun, a streak or two of gray falling to frame her slender face, twisted into a terrifying expression. Keith can feel the wrath from here.

Lance squeaks, looking for a way out of the car that won’t deposit him directly into the path of the furious woman. “ _¡Mierda!_ Shiro, you _told her_? Hide me, hide me!”

“I had to tell her something, Lance, and she was going to find out anyway.” Shiro is tired.

“Lance!” bellows the woman as she throws open the door, and Lance freezes completely. Keith thinks maybe he’s trying to channel a chameleon, but his tactic doesn’t work as she drags him out of the car by his ear.

“Ah, Mama, Mama, please, ow! I need my crutches −”

“ _Pendejo_ , you wouldn’t need crutches if you hadn’t been an idiot, going around looking for trouble! _¡Cabrón!_ ” She shakes him and he winces, just managing to pull out his crutches as the door slams behind him.

Keith looks over at Shiro, who smiles at him. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell her the details.”

“What if _he_ tells her?” Keith can’t see Lance’s mother taking his involvement in Lance’s injury well, and he honestly wouldn’t blame her. But what would it mean if he’s...

Staying?

“It’ll be all right.” Shiro claps him on the shoulder. “Lance is nice, okay? And his mother is too.”

Staying, huh?

“Sorry, Mrs. McClain.” Shiro opens the door to get out as she taps on it. Cautiously, Keith does the same, coming to hover somewhere behind Shiro, unnoticed. He folds his arms, trying to make himself smaller. “I wish I could have brought him home in one piece.”

She chuckles, all warm and thankful now, and releases her son to give Shiro a hug. “Not at all, he’s mostly in one piece, though I’m not sure he will be when I’m through with him.” Behind her, Lance shudders. “Thank you for bringing him back every time he runs off, Shiro.”

“Of course. I also asked if maybe you’d have room for...”

“Keith? Yes.” She’s still surprisingly warm as she cranes her neck to peer at Keith – he’s not hiding behind Shiro, no, that would be childish – though a ribbon of uncertainty threads its way through the light she’s exuding.

Still, it’s utterly maternal and loving. He can’t remember ever feeling this directed towards him before.

“You’re all friends? You can stay with Lance, maybe keep him from making any more _decisiones estúpidas_ , yes?”

“Y-yes.” Keith doesn’t miss Lance glowering at the ground.

“Do you not have more?” She gestures at his empty hands.

“Oh, um, no.”

“I’ll pay you back if you get him some more clothes.” Shiro pulls Keith from behind him with an arm around his shoulders with his own brand of something almost paternal. It rankles Keith a little – Shiro’s only a few years older than him. Okay, probably closer to ten than like, two. But still. “Can’t have him running around in the same dirty T-shirt and jeans all the time.”

Keith flushes as Lance snickers.

“Of course. Show him up to where he’ll be sleeping, _niño_.”

“How am I supposed to get there with these?” Lance demands, raising a crutch.

She tugs on his ear again. “I guess you’ll have to figure it out.”

She lets him lead Keith in, staying to speak with Shiro.

Inside the house, there’s lots of children. There are only two playing in the entry as Lance shoves open the door with his shoulder and prods at them with his good foot. Keith can feel so many more spread throughout the building. It makes him dizzy.

“Out of the way, gremlins, I’m injured and coming through.”

“Whadja do, Lance?” The grimy-faced girl with pigtails reaches to grab at the plaster with interest, dropping her doll, and he dodges. Though Keith can’t see his face from behind, he can hear the grin in his voice.

“I fended off a lion. Just managed to get away.”

“That’s not real,” laughs the even tinier boy, a bubble of simple, unadulterated amusement, hugging his one-eyed teddy bear to his chest. He catches sight of Keith behind Lance, and his eyes go wide, the bubble popping.

“Sure it’s real, squirt. What, you don’t think your older brother’s a hero in his spare time?”

“Who’s that?”

“Keith,” Lance says shortly. “He’s staying with us.”

He continues on without another word, leaving Keith behind to be stared at with nervous awe. Uncomfortable, he hurries after Lance, who’s now standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.

“Let’s do this,” he finally mutters, and starts the arduous process of hauling himself up the stairs.

It takes a long time to reach the top of the stairs – two full flights later, Lance shoves open a door.

“So. This is my room.”

Keith huffs out a breath, tightening his crossed arms as he looks up and around, taking in the room. It’s an attic space – brightened up as much as it can be with posters of different singers and bands Keith doesn’t know plastered across the walls, mismatched furniture like a battered old armchair in the corner with stuffing sticking out or a well-loved, once-painted-white vanity sitting proudly to the side that is missing its seat, but is also covered in bottles, tubes, and plastic sleeves of creams, lotions and facemasks. A single window above the space-patterned bed overlooks the neighborhood.

There are dozens of pictures – selfies − of Lance with Hunk and Pidge, jumping around in sprinklers, baking (and burning, despite what looks to be Hunk’s best efforts) cookies together, crowded together at what seems to be a concert − as Keith observes the ones closest − and one or two with Shiro in unassuming places, who’s smiling as Lance holds up the camera to capture the both of them. The photos are pinned up, scattered around the place amid the posters, and one large picture with all of them – Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, and Allura − is framed on the desk of the vanity. Allura is cuddled up to Shiro, the side of her face pressed to his chest as they both smile picturesquely up at the camera from behind the others, a widely-grinning Hunk’s got his arms around Pidge and Lance’s shoulders respectively, and Lance is in the middle of them all, looking over the moon. The top of Matt’s head is just in frame, but Pidge is shoving him out, laughing.

“‘So that’s how you’re so skinny, huh, Lance?’” Lance says in a mocking, exaggeratedly deep tone, flopping down on the bed, interrupting Keith’s scrutiny. His crutches clatter on the floor and his limbs hang off the edge – it’s much too small for him. “‘You run up and down the stairs all day, no wonder you’re skin and bones!’ This’ll be fun with a broken leg every day. Maybe I can convince someone to bring me food.”

Keith stares at him. “Is that what you think I’d say?”

“Come on, you look like you work out, you’re a bit of an asshole, I’m sure it’s what you’re _thinking_.”

“A bit of an asshole?” Keith echoes, but really, _you look like you work out_ is what repeats itself in his head. He does, he tries to. There’s not much else he can really do.

But Lance noticed.

Lance rolls his eyes at Keith. “You can’t expect me to read you as some Disney prince after the stunts you’ve pulled, can you?”

Keith rubs the back of his neck. “Well, I – I wasn’t thinking that.”

“What a saint.” Lance sighs and tries to roll over, his brow creasing. “Ow. Shit. Where are my meds?”

He fumbles for his pockets to swallow two pills dry, laying an arm over his eyes.

Saint indeed. Keith caused this. He digs his nails into his palms again as guilt crashes over him.

“Don’t look so broody.” Lance sits up, pulling his good leg to his chest and leaning on it. He regards Keith with an indecipherable look in his eyes. A slight grin lifts a corner of his mouth and Keith feels suddenly like all this was a very, very bad idea.

“So. Let’s finish that conversation, Mullet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *coughs*hey my broskis my amigos my vrienden my babes i cosplayed keith [here](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/post/162519219849/keith-is-just-permanently-questioning-the-sanity) n [here (this one is a shitty actual thing for this fic bc i'm just cringy like that)](https://www.musical.ly/v/MzI1ODEyNDExODc2MzUyMjQ5OTc4ODg.html) if u wanna u know check it out*coughs*  
> -  
> ok so um my spanish speaking friend advised me but i probably fucked up majorly with the language anyway as i only got her advice on a little (which i think might have resulted in um very extreme insults when Lance’s momma should have probably been a little less...that, but that’s how my friend talks so uh). i am only a semi-dutch speaker & know how to say fuck you in russian but that’s it so yikes plz correct me immediately if need be.......i tried......  
> 


	6. Chapter 6

“What the heck was all that?”

“All what?” Keith stalls. He wanders over to the vanity and picks up a bottle mindlessly, hoping to sidetrack the boy with anything –

“Don’t touch that!” Lance snaps. Success for a moment, and then: “Stop trying to distract me. I’m letting you stay here, all right? Out of the extreme goodness of my heart. I’m not making you sleep in an abandoned house, or reporting you to my mother, or anything like that. You owe me answers, asshole.”

He really does. The problem is, Lance probably wouldn’t like the answers he’d get if Keith spilled his guts.

“It’s not really that simple,” Keith finally mutters, scrubbing his hand through his hair.

“Nuh-uh, no, nope. I’m done with your evasion techniques, Mullet.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Keith glares, irritated.

“It’s what you have.” Lance grins.

The anger bashes into Keith’s consciousness quickly – she’s running up the stairs, and he flinches before he means to, turning to stare at the door a moment before it slams open.

“Lance McClain, you have chores to do!”

“Uh, I, um – Keith is doing them for me.”

“What?!” He throws another glare Lance’s way, but the other boy’s gaze is surprisingly probing, curious. Keith swallows. “I’m not doing them.”

“You are, my best buddy, my old pal, or I have something to tell my mother, don’t I?”

Mrs. McClain is curious, but Keith has locked onto the too-lanky boy draped across the galaxy bedspread. He wouldn’t.

Lance’s eyes narrowing and a fierce smirk touching his lips say with certainty: _oh yes he would._

“...I’ll do them,” Keith sighs.

“Perfect.” Lance claps his hands together, even as disapproval radiates through the room from the doorway.

“I expect you’ll be down for dinner along with Keith when the time comes, _alborotador_.”

“But my leg’s broken,” Lance whines, patting the cast.

“I won’t have you weaseling out of both.”

“Keith can bring me dinner.” Lance folds his chin into his hands, grinning. “This is great. It’s like having my own personal maid.”

“Leave the poor boy alone,” Mrs. McClain scolds as she rolls her eyes and reaches to close the door behind her. “Keith, if you do want to help out, you can come downstairs in a bit and I’ll get you started. Dinner, downstairs, Lance.”

The door closes and Keith breathes.

“You knew she was coming.” It isn’t a question.

Keith stops breathing.

“You moved before I heard anything. And you can’t be around people. And you’re just...weird.”

Keith stares at Lance’s cast, mouth dry.

“And you really aren’t going to answer any of my questions.”

He meets Lance’s gaze, which is blue and resigned and even, and shakes his head.

“Well, I guess that just means you’re gonna be paying me back in many, many other ways.” A frankly evil smirk spreads across Lance’s face and Keith can’t repress a growl.

“I’m already doing your chores!”

“You said it, not me! Go forth, my angry minion, and do my work – and _part_ of your debt is paid!”

Keith decides then and there that he’s done playing nice with his new roommate. 

* * *

 

“Done playing nice,” however, does not mean he’s getting out of doing Lance’s chores, because he can’t get himself _kicked out_ for _breaking his host’s son_.

It turns out Lance’s chores include picking up around the entire house, throwing a couple of loads of laundry through the wash, and also, apparently, helping to make dinner.

Keith would have wondered at all this work when there were so many people in the house, but he catches glimpses of them, feels their bored routine – they’re all engaged in their own chores.

Mrs. McClain tells him to stuff whatever toys he finds into their nearest container and says she’ll be doing most of the dinnertime prep, but there’s almost no instruction on his laundry.

So Keith finds himself standing in front of the two giant metal boxes, staring at knobs and dials and buttons. Numbers. High, low, hot, cold. Spin cycle?

He should use soap, right? He can hand wash, he had to do that with his own clothes.

He looks to the many hampers stacked next to the machines, piled high, and spies a frilly pair of pink underwear.

Nope.

“What, you never seen a washer before?”

A girl who could be Lance’s twin is peering over Keith’s shoulder. The boy who’d been playing in the entryway earlier is balanced on her hip, his teddy bear’s ear in his mouth as he stares at Keith. Innocent distrust, unsure and wary. The girl, on the other hand, is covering up her amusement. Is this what Lance would feel like, if Keith could know? He watches the corner of her mouth quirk upward – just like him.

“You’re staring, weirdo. The soap’s up in the cabinet, use half a cap per load.”

Keith looks back to the washer. He sees the little label in the corner now, but still, there’s so many dials.

“Oh my god. Here.”

She reaches to flip and twist and press – cold, express, alert.

“It’s a load of darks, and you really shouldn’t spend any more time than you have to washing a single load in this house – we’re _made_ of laundry. It’ll let you know when it’s done and you can move it to the dryer, okay?”

She shifts the boy and raises an eyebrow at Keith. A hint of envy works its way into her head, tiptoeing its way through her amusement, turning it sour. He has no idea why. “Spoiled, huh? Guess your parents had time and money to spare?”

_Oh. Oh, no._

He ducks his head before he has to hide his expression from her, because this is not something he can fake his way through. He can’t tell her the last time he watched one of the two people that he can only in the barest sense of the word call his parents do laundry, he was barely tall enough to reach the cabinet with the soap. He certainly can’t tell her why.

“Well, I’m Gwen, this is Rafael. And you’re my idiot little brother’s friend, right? You’re staying with us. Were you there when he broke his leg? What’d he do?”

She’s eager, any hint of darkness flown from her head, breezing past what she’s said – she doesn’t know, that’s good, but he still can’t compose his face, he can’t speak without his voice shaking, he can feel a quiver in his throat, a shaking in his core. He turns to the first laundry bin and starts dumping it in, mumbling. “He just...He fell down some stairs.”

“Ha!” She slaps him on the shoulder, he tries not to tense. “I’d have paid money to see that.”

“Yeah.”

“So, what’s your name? How’d Lance convince you to hang out with him?”

“Keith.” He pours detergent into the compartment she pulls out for him and hopes she doesn’t notice him avoiding the second part of her question.

She doesn’t. She’s too busy looking to Rafael, raising one of his hands in her own to fake a wave at Keith.

“Say, ‘Hi, Keith!’”

Rafael looks at her, then back at Keith. His mouth stays stubbornly shut, and his face is stamped with his still whirling wariness.

Gwen sighs. “I know you can talk, Monkey. You’ll have to eventually. How long are you staying with us?”

Waiting for her to tell him he missed a step, he hovers a finger over the start button. She doesn’t, so he presses and suppresses a flinch at the growing roar of it rumbling to life. Yes, he remembers this sound, a particular instance when it was accompanied by screaming and hot, roiling anger. And fear, so much fear. His own voice sounds far away.

“I don’t know. Until I can move in with Shiro.”

“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t stay in this house for much longer than you have to. Most of my siblings are little fiends −” she pinches Rafael’s cheek at this, and he swats his teddy bear at her “− but Lance. Lance is the height of a sibling monster.”

She’s smirking until they hear the clicking and clomping of crutches and a heavy one-legged gait above them – as fast as such a stride can be.

“I heard that, Gwen! Maybe I can’t walk, but I can still kick your ass!”

“Not if I’m gone before you can get here,” Gwen calls, winking at Keith before turning tail and hopping down the stairs next to them. Rafael bounces as she runs, back to staring intently over her shoulder at Keith until they both disappear.

Muffled curses as the sounds above speed up even more, and Keith is just stepping into Lance’s path to dubiously watch his progress when a body comes crashing down the stairs into him.

The crutches hurt as they bounce off him – one clipping his temple, the other, his legs, but catching Lance is what really takes the breath out of him. It’s gone in a huff as Lance’s face collides with his chest, and Keith grabs him, stumbling back a few shaky steps.

A cross between a whimper and a groan erupts into his shirt front as Lance’s fingers twist into the fabric at Keith’s back in pain, hopping to favor the leg he’d banged up in his fall.

He inhales and exhales, once, twice, and finally straightens, reaching his full height again – a little taller (annoyingly) and a little shakier than Keith.

“Screw stairs,” he huffs, teeth gritted. “Screw my sister.”

Keith can’t say anything, because Lance is just _so close_ , but he doesn’t even seem to realize until _he does_. Immediately, he flings his hands up, letting go of Keith’s shirt, trying to pull back out of his space, but this sends him hurtling off balance again. He yelps and his hands are grabbing to fasten around both of Keith’s forearms, and Keith has to brace himself against not only the weight of another teenage boy, but also the dropping of all his usual ambient noise once more.

He closes his eyes and tries to not look, but he _has_ to open his eyes and look down at those long brown fingers clenched around his pale arms. Almost eighteen years of constant voices pressing in, then, _silence._

“Uh, can you get my crutches?”

“Y-yeah.”

He mourns the loss when Lance releases him in favor of reaching for soft plastic handles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> workin on a one-to-two shot about Keith's past. Obviously I probably won't post it until Keith's talked about it a little in fic tho  
> -  
> when u wanna make keith do laundry bc it’s a chore u can add backstory to but then ur like fuck this is a klance fic i can’t do LAUNDRY it’s BEEN DONE but FUCK IT  
> 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this a klance fic or a keith just wants a family fic? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Keith holes himself up in the little corner of the laundry nook after that, sitting on the edge of the washer, listening to the vibrations against the wall with his eyes closed, trying to breathe. After three loads, he thinks he might have desensitized himself a bit, but there are still two to go when he realizes Mrs. McClain is mounting the stairs with intention, purpose.

He can’t read minds exactly, but somehow, he knows he’s being called without words, knows with almost certainty she’s looking for him.

He’s at the top of the stairs just before she reaches them, and she jumps as she pulls up just in front of him. “Oh! Keith, good! I was just about to come find you. Please, come, dinner is soon.”

She turns tail and leads him back down. The house, though generally messy – as Keith’s attempt to tidy attests – seems to be filled with the sun. Light woods and cheerful paints, big windows, the occasional faded marker drawing low to the ground, and a collection of makeshift height measurements in pencil to one side of the kitchen doorway.

Keith lingers as he passes this, eyes flicking up and down to pick out names, ages. Each year has a new measurement, a different day repeating for each person that has to be birthdays, but Keith is looking for names, skipping over some of the same labels that stretch upward to search for new ones.

 _Rafael, Mari, Gavin, Lance, Gwen, Nicolas._ A present day measurement, less than a year ago, just above his eye level catches his eye – _Lance, age 17._ Keith could swear Lance has even grown since then. Up higher, again, is Nicolas several times, but between Lance and Nicolas’s names, another starts up for a few marks: _Angela_. Both Nicolas and Angela are in their twenties at their last measurement, but neither have been measured for several years.

 _Gone? Left?_ Keith feels sick to his stomach. Kicked out? Or had they just...struck out on their own and never looked back?

He can’t imagine choosing to leave behind a loving family. It’s unthinkable.

Mrs. McClain had stopped at the sink as she realized he wasn’t immediately behind her, and she smiles as his gaze drifts to her. “Seven kids can be a handful, that is for sure.” Her eyes find the measurements and glaze over for a moment before she sighs. “Lance, though. He...can be difficult. Sometimes I wonder if it is he, instead of Gavin, who is the moody thirteen year old.”

The bittersweet memories are heavy in Keith’s chest, a lump in Mrs. McClain’s throat. Nostalgia for another person’s life.

She beams at him again as she pushes these feelings away and smooths down her skirt briskly. “Perhaps you can be a good influence on him while you are here.”

He wants to say her trust in him in misplaced, he’s much, much worse than Lance – he’s a liar, a freak. If he delves into the depths of all that he is, he thinks he can find worse than that.

But Lance’s mother’s smile – though perhaps still imbued with the slightest bit of guardedness – is as cheerful as the rest of her house as she hands him an onion and a knife.

“Will you help with cutting this? There’s more things on the counter to dice. Thank you.”

So he doesn’t say anything, and tries to cut the onion before she has to stop him to show him how to peel off the skin first.

She’s making enchiladas, Keith learns (whatever that is), and the task of cooking enough to eat for a household this large – five children at the moment, him, and both parents – is a chore indeed. He dices vegetables until he’s sure he’s going to cut himself from the leftover liquid swimming in his eyes, courtesy of the onions. And _all_ the peppers. Still, she’s preparing chicken, setting up pans, tortillas and cheese.

She talks as she works, about everything and nothing, the weather, her lovely, accomplished children, occasionally breaking off to mumble to herself as she concentrates, as if forgetting Keith is there. Sometimes humming, sometimes she sings – from songs that sound more like her children’s taste to fully Spanish lyrics.

When she finally slides the last pan into the oven and straightens up, wiping her forehead, they’re sharing the tired satisfaction of a job well done. Keith knows many more odd bits and pieces about her family, many trivial, but some significant. It’s strange, listening to a doting mother speak about her offspring like they are the center of her world. Overwhelming. It leaves a slightly angry, bitter taste in Keith’s mouth even as he hangs on to every word, utterly silent in the face of her chatter, which requires no interjections. He drinks in the maternal adoration flowing from her like it’s water in a scorched dry desert. Can almost pretend it could be directed towards him.

Rafael is her youngest, a sweetheart who can do no wrong, while his sister Mariposa is doing so well in school that they’re considering moving her up a grade. Gavin is sullen but he can paint like no one else, and Gwen is getting 4.0s in her college classes _and_ − Mrs. McClain adds with glee, her hips swaying excitedly to a tune in her head – she just got engaged before she came home for the summer.

She gets quieter when she speaks about her oldest children, but it’s not entirely sad. She’s happy still, still proud. Just touched by regret.

Their achievements are the most impressive of all. Nicolas is married, at only twenty three, and riding his career in tech to the top. And Angela, Angela is her oldest, the hardest worker Mrs. McClain has ever known, who put herself through medical school by working herself to the bone and now has the title of doctor to show for it.

“They had to move away,” she had said, waving her own knife in a parody of casual airiness, except that Keith knew the tightness in her chest, “for work. They are doing so well, so I am so proud of them. They can’t come home, but I am proud of them. _Es una buena cosa_.”

Now, as he helps her wipe down the counters, he realizes – “What about Lance?”

Another soft, slightly sad smile. “Lance, ah. You know him. He is my little _león_ , so fierce, so strong. But he has not been making it easy for anyone.”

Keith scrubs at a dried sauce spot on the counter with his washcloth, watching it scrape away. He doesn’t know Lance, doesn’t know what “not making it easy” for people means, but he can’t ask her.

“Well, I’ve spoken a lot, haven’t I?” Mrs. McClain rubs her forehead, laughing, as she tugs the cloth from Keith’s hands. “Gwen tells me that I talk people’s ears off. Go on, you’ve helped enough.” She pats his shoulder. “I am sure you don’t want to listen to your friend’s mother talk all day.”

He doesn’t mind though, that’s the thing, he muses as he climbs the stairs. There’s something about listening to her that feels like a warm hug, that makes Keith’s eyes burn and his throat close up. 

* * *

 

Lance gripes when the dinner call is finally made, so Mrs. McClain gives in and brings him his plate in his room.

Keith wants to hide there as well, but he can’t say no when she asks him to come down and meet everyone officially.

“Officially” just means a roll call around the table. All the McClains look similar. Keith can pick out a shared nose or chin between several. It’s his first time meeting Gavin, who stares at his plate and doesn’t talk to anyone. There’s a splotch of paint on his nose, and his teal hair (the only deviance from the family’s shared brown) is messy. He’s surly, making Keith tap fingers against his leg to try and break the mood echoing in his own head.

Rafael doesn’t speak either, but he looks at Keith almost the whole meal, while his sister, Mari, the girl in the entryway, who seats herself directly next to Keith, proudly brags about how she climbed the biggest tree in her friend’s yard.

Between Gwen and Mrs. McClain, there’s never silence, and they laugh at each other across the table.

Mr. McClain shows up late, tired, carrying his own bubble of irritation. He brushes off Mrs. McClain’s look of worried disapproval and picks up his fork with barely an acknowledgment of Keith’s introduction.

Keith’s foot bounces under the table. He doesn’t like it. It can morph into anger too easily.

“Where’s Lance?” Mr. McClain finally asks, looking around. Gwen’s grin is Cheshire-worthy as she opens her mouth, but Mrs. McClain beats her to it, tone unrelenting.

“No, Gwen.” She murmurs something in his ear. Keith braces himself. He wishes he could have an excuse to leave before rage explodes, but...

He drops his fork when − instead of igniting worse – Mrs. McClain’s words seem to spark _deflation_ of Mr. McClain’s mood. He slumps in his chair, rubbing his forehead with a sigh.

“Of course. Of course he did.” He lets his hand drop. “Well, nothing to do but wait for the hospital bill.”

Keith feels light-headed with relief, blindsided by calm when he’d been so sure fury had been coming. He picks at the pieces of tortilla on his plate, trying to calm himself down from the adrenaline high he’d never even realized his pulse had kicked up.

The rest of the meal is quiet after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am an unofficial Appreciate Lance Squad member and I take my job v seriously so don’t worry we gonna get some proper Lance Appreciation up in here v soon  
> also i wrote a terribly sad awfully angsty backstory prequel for keith about why he’s so scared of washing machines  
> ^ a sentence that should never have existed but does now anyhoo it’ll be up when we finally get our klance heart-to-heart WHENEVER THAT HAPPENS all the more incentive to wait on the edges of ur seats ur welcome babes


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PARDON ME WHILE I FREAK ABOUT S3 BEING SO SOON AND ALL THE NEW SHIT WE GOT and it’s LANCE’S BIRTHDAY SOON TOO HAPPY BIRTHDAY BB ILY more than i seem to in this fic  
> all right ok i wrote the super langsty backstory reveal forever ago and wanted to finally get to it.......next chapter ;)  
> .........HEY MAN...... ;))))))))

By the end of a week of life in the McClain household with Lance in self-confined bedrest, apparently, he’s had it.

He’s flopped across his bed when Keith comes back from a shower, patting down a gray paste he’s apparently willingly applied all over his face with a dramatically detached expression underneath. Catching sight of Keith in the doorway, staring weirdly at him, Lance groans and rolls over, letting limbs splay out every which way. “Don’t even say it, Mullet. I’m grouchy and tired and I won’t hear you talking shit about my precious mud masks. A pretty boy like me has a reputation to upkeep! Even if the only person who sees him is an overly-violent emo with bad hair who couldn’t tell a sugar scrub from a face wash.”

Keith snorts. They’ve tolerated each other as roommates, but Lance still throws taunts – usually with a grin, but Keith will prod him back if need be.

“It’s _self-care_!”

“Whatever.” Keith tosses his towel down on the blow-up mattress that Gwen had helped him inflate on night one and tries to sit on it, grimacing as he hits the ground instead of being properly suspended. Roughly, he begins toweling dry his hair, until his gaze falls on an appalled-looking Lance, who has sat up to stare at him. Keith stops, raising a questioning eyebrow. “Problem?”

“Do you even....? Oh my god.” Lance’s violent beckoning has Keith standing back up and drifting cautiously, curiously in his direction. Lance slides off the edge of the bed to hop awkwardly over to his vanity, opening drawers to yank out a hairdryer and rifling through a few more to stack up an impressive collection of bottles and tubes.

“This is why you have bad hair, man! Jesus. _Towel drying_ − for shame. If you’re gonna try to rock this...statement of a hairstyle, you gotta put some effort in!”

“I’m fine the way it is!” Keith protests as Lance limps back, seating himself in front of Keith and tipping his haul across the bed.

“Shut up and give me your head. _Siéntate_.”

“What?”

“ _Sit down._ ”

So now Keith is sitting on the floor in front of Lance, trying to concentrate on breathing properly and not flinching when Lance touches him.

There’s a squirt and fizz of something, and he flinches anyway when he feels fingers brush his scalp. But Lance is surprisingly gentle as he works something foamy into Keith’s still wet hair, and as everything fades away, Keith finds himself drooping backwards, eyes fluttering shut. It’s _magic_ , in more ways than one, Lance is magic, more than Keith has ever been. He thinks he might be drooling, and absently swipes at his mouth.

Lance shakes underneath him and he half-opens his eyes to find out why. Lance is smirking down at Keith, exhaling the last vestiges of a chuckle. Blue eyes catch and hold him as Lance gently pokes his cheek with a wet finger, smiling down at him. “Not so bad, huh?”

Right now, Keith thinks Lance could get him to agree even if he asked if murder didn’t sound so bad. Mutely, he nods, lost in – well, bliss. And maybe a little bit entranced with Lance’s bright blue eyes and a peek of white teeth.

“And I’m not even done yet! We’re just making sure your hair is smooth.” A pause, then sniffing. “Hang on, did you use my sister’s shampoo?”

Keith sits up, yanking his head out of Lance’s reach. His face is red, he can feel it as he trembles against the resurgence of McClain minds. “I – I just grabbed the plainest looking bottle!”

Lance snickers. “Nice strawberry scent.”

“You’re the one who uses... _sugar scrubs_!” Okay, it’s a weak insult considering Keith has absolutely zero idea what a sugar scrub actually is, but...

“I’d give you a pass, but Gwen literally chooses her bath products by the cheapest option. That shit is fake as hell.” He makes grabby hands at Keith, who sullenly scoots into his spot once more, back bumping the mattress. Lance’s hands return to rubbing at Keith’s hair, patting with each syllable for emphasis. “Use the good shampoo.”

“It really doesn’t matter,” Keith mumbles as Lance reaches to plug in the dryer, his knees clamping around Keith’s shoulders to prevent him from escaping.

“I won’t have my makeover ruined!” The buzz of the hairdryer in Keith’s ear is too loud for arguments, so he lets Lance lightly run hands through his quickly drying locks without a word. He starts to get up when it shuts off, but Lance catches his collar.

“Ah, ah ah.” He sprinkles some sort of dust into Keith’s hair, scrunching it, and suddenly, it isn’t flat anymore, and then he’s spraying something that smells pleasant.

“There!” Lance jumps up and hobbles his way back over to the vanity, tugging Keith with him. “See!”

Keith blinks at himself. His hair really does look good – shiny and smooth. He runs a hand over it.

“Beautiful. Now, if we can just do something about that skin...” Lance scrapes a fingernail against Keith’s cheek, flicking off a dry flake, which makes Keith wince and glare.

Lance grins at him. “Fine, fine. Honestly, though, now I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with you in public.” His eyes glaze over and he moans pitifully, looking to the window. “I really want out, though. I thought lazing around would be a piece of cake! I want to _be_ in public! It’s gorgeous outside, I want to be in the water, just feeling the sun...”

“You could just go.”

Lance turns to look at him, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I could, couldn’t I? Screw it. I’m going to the beach and no one can stop me.”

“The beach?” Keith echoes skeptically, as Lance spins away.

“Hell yeah! I’ll call up Hunk and Pidge and Shiro and Allura...It’s only noon, we could go today. I need to get outside!”

“You have a cast.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “I won’t _swim_ , whatever – and you shouldn’t either, not when I just spent all that time on you. You can get some beachy volume in that hair and I need to work on a tan, anyway, it’s summer and I’m looking more gray than brown!”

Keith holds back a grin. With that facemask, it’s more true than Lance probably realizes.

“Not-brown-Lance just _not right_. Come on, Keithy, let’s go!” 

* * *

 

“You’re not going.”

“Mama!” The word is long and pleading and losing hope quickly.

“If you can go to the beach, you should be getting back to your job, _niño_. I seem to recall them being desperate for workers when they accepted you.” Mrs. McClain raises an unforgiving eyebrow as she rolls back up one of her fallen sleeves and folds a shirt neatly.

“You make it sound like I was a last resort,” Lance scowls, arms folded.

“I’m afraid your resume isn’t the most exciting thing about you, Lance. And you know we cannot afford to give you spending money, if you want to buy your own things while you are out. You need to get back to work, _cariño_.”

“I know.” It’s a tired mumble.

Keith watches Lance from the doorway, his own hands fists deep in his pockets. Lance had been so excited, leading Keith downstairs on his crutches as he dictated a group message for Keith to type out and send as soon as possible. Now, he’s slouching next to his mother’s bed, eyes dull, all joy gone.

“Please, M-Mrs. McClain?” His voice surprises even him as the words tumble out, quiet.

Her eyes turn to him, and Lance is turning too, to blink at him, and there’s surprised silence. Mrs. McClain’s gaze falls to her hands as she presses her lips together. But she’s suddenly right on the edge of agreeing, Keith knows, and he’s as surprised as Lance seems to be, who’s still staring at him, face still too unreadable.

A sigh. “All right.”

Lance whips back around. “Wait, really?”

She sends him an evil eye. “I want you to call your boss and tell him you will be in as soon as they next need you. Then you may go.”

“Go and get sand and water in your cast? Not a good plan, bro.” Now Gwen is leaning out from behind Keith, who’d chosen to let her eavesdrop in peace, but Lance and Mrs. McClain jump at her sudden announcement of her presence.

“Well, I’m _going_!” Lance growls.

“I know. Really, though, am I the only one looking up proper cast care? Come on, let’s waterproof you.” 

* * *

 

“It looks stupid,” Lance mutters. “I look like I stepped in the garbage and took it with me.”

“But at least you won’t get an infection! Utility over looks!” Hunk says brightly, carefully and proudly finishing the top tier of his intricate sand castle with a tiny feather.

“But you _do_ look stupid,” Pidge grins, and jumps away as Lance throws sand at them, sticking his tongue out. The black garbage bag Gwen had secured with a rubber band around his cast is a little clunky, but Keith agrees with Hunk. Not that Lance would give Keith The Mullet Owner the time of day when it came to his weigh in on appearances.

The beach they’ve picked is only relatively full, so Keith can grit his teeth and block out strangers with moderate success. He’s forced himself to become accustomed to the McClain house over the last few days, and surprisingly, he thinks he’s succeeded.

“I’d dunk you on any other day, twerp!” Lance calls as Pidge disappears into the waves, laughing gleefully and calling for Hunk and Keith to escape from Lance’s clutches into the sea with them.

“Lance, you’re getting sand all over the towels,” Shiro reprimands from behind them as he and Allura set down the rest of the beach things they’d been fetching from the car.

“Nice to see you too,” Lance says, throwing more sand in their direction. Allura huffs in protest and Shiro raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry. I was trying to hit Keith,” Lance says unconvincingly, especially considering Keith is sitting on his other side. Keith sends him a glare that he doesn’t see and gathers up his own handful of sand.

“We missed you too,” Allura sighs, setting a hand on top of Lance’s head before she sets down her beach bag and reaches into it.

“See that, Shiro?” Lance grins cheekily up at the other man. “Your girlfriend just petted me.”

“I feel very threatened in my relationship,” Shiro almost deadpans, but his eyes are twinkling as they catch Keith’s. A small grin appears as he takes in the crouch Keith has shifted into. “I’m sure you’ll be as good at getting Allura to date you as you are at hitting your intended targets with sand.”

“I wasn’t _really_ trying, I’m good at aiming for −” He interrupts himself with an graceless squawk as Keith pelts him with his prepped sand-ball at close range.

“Like that?” Keith murmurs in a motionless Lance’s sandy ear, who stiffens for a good moment before turning on Keith to the sound of Allura’s laughter.

“Y-you’re lucky, I, uh, I don’t want to screw up your hair, all right?”

“Sure, _sharpshooter_ ,” Keith smirks, watching with satisfaction as Lance flushes and glares.

“All right, break it up. Keith, come here, you’re going to get sunburned.” Shiro tugs his arm, pulling him over to Shiro’s own towel and uncapping a tube of sunscreen. Shiro’s already shirtless and smeared with his own generous helping of lotion, and Keith swallows as he’s pulled to sit down, trying not to stare at the vast, muscled chest right in front of him as Shiro starts to massage it into his arm.

He isn’t a little kid anymore, he shouldn’t indulge himself with this.

“See, you’re red already.” Shiro squeezes Keith’s nose between two slippery fingers, smiling, and Keith can feel himself going redder. Being able to feel the same paternal vibes flowing off Shiro as when Keith was small makes this extra...insulting? Irritating? Embarrassing? He could describe the whirl of his stomach as any of them, and he twists his head away as soon as Shiro has finished rubbing it into his face − in more ways than one.

His eyes catch Lance’s without meaning to. Lance is sitting on the collection of towels Keith abandoned, Hunk’s finished sand castle at his side. But Hunk has followed Pidge to answer the call of the water, and Allura has set out her towel on Shiro’s other side, leaving Lance by himself.

The look Lance sends him is small and cold and fleeting before he turns away, reaching for his crutches. “I’m going for a walk,” he announces in a weird voice.

“Be careful,” Shiro calls absently, and Lance nods stiffly, his back still to them as he gets up and starts limping awkwardly away through the packed wet sand.

Lance is gone for the rest of the day, until the sky is starting to turn peachy pink and the water sparkles with gold. Everyone’s beginning to pack up when Shiro looks around. “Can someone find Lance? Where did he go?”

Everyone else searches the beach as well. Hunk’s brow furrows and Pidge’s grin drops. Allura and Shiro too, look worried.

But Keith’s been watching Lance for a while now, far down the beach, propped up on his crutches and chatting with other beachgoers. “I’ll get him.”

He jogs across the beach, chewing on his lip at people’s minds bumping against his as he crosses the strip of sand.

Lance is talking to two girls lying on their towels. Their minds are more indulgent than interested, but they’re still smiling up at him.

“Lance,” Keith calls, and watches Lance twitch.

The girls’ eyes are on him now, and suddenly, there’s a wash of focus. No, he doesn’t want that.

“Sorry, ladies.” Lance turns to Keith. “What do you want?”

“Everyone’s getting ready to go.”

“All right, then you can run along and help them until I’m done talking.”

“Wait, no, let your friend stay,” says one of the girls, and the other nods. Keith tries not to grimace.

“Well, he’s not my friend.” Lance’s smile is hard as he looks back to the girls.

It’s a barb that hits its mark. Keith swallows around a thickly dry throat and blinks. His eyes are burning.

He’d thought...well, he’d thought maybe...

It had been a week, they’d been doing good. Lance didn’t hate him, not anymore. Keith may not be able to see inside his head, but Lance was too...too good for hatred. Even a week had taught Keith that. Lance’s hatred didn’t last, he forgave too quickly. He’d been scared, angry, freaked out by Keith, he’d tossed out jokes at Keith’s expense and had glared at him some, but they were past that.

This morning, with Lance’s fingers in his hair – they were _past_ hatred. That soft smile down at Keith when he’d asked if it wasn’t so bad...

Keith steps closer, reaching for Lance’s shoulder. “They were looking for you, people were −”

“I don’t care!” Lance whirls back on him, slapping away Keith’s hand and shoving him back, and Keith is tripping and falling and _ouch_.

“Lance!” Shiro’s bellow is loud, and it would have reached them even if he’d been halfway down the beach, but he’s right there, running up, and worried, fearful as he kneels next to Keith. Keith can feel the rest behind him, shocked, nervous, frightened too.

Keith almost doesn’t notice the blood. He’s trembling, shuddering as Shiro inhales through his teeth and carefully cradles Keith’s scraped up arm in his hands. It’s not that bad, a few rocks he’d hit, they’d been sharp. The yelling and the push, though, they had been...

Shakily, Keith looks up to Lance, who’s –

Remorseful, scared, sorry. Keith’s transfixed as he shivers, and Lance is stuck staring, but his eyes say he’s sorry, so sorry.

“Lance.” Shiro again, his voice harsh as he, too, looks up at Lance, but now Lance’s face is suddenly hardening, his jaw tightening.

“I’m going home,” he spits.

“You don’t even know what you’ve...” Shiro growls.

“I’m going!”

“Keith came with you!”

“Then he can follow me!” Lance stalks away as best he can on crutches, and Keith clenches his fist, ignoring red welling up and starting its slow trickle down his arm, and gets up. He spares a glance around to meet the wide eyes of everyone and the worried eyes of Shiro before he runs after Lance towards the car.

The ride home in Lance’s beat up old powder blue car is stonily silent – it’s what starts to set Keith off as he watches Lance glare at the road and tries not to drip blood onto anything − and it continues through the front door, up the stairs, and into Lance’s room, where he waits until Keith has followed him in to slam the door.

Which is, coincidentally, the amount of time it takes for Keith’s temper to finally snap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck lance is canonly the baby of his family now but uhhhhhhh he makes a cute older brother ok whatever  
> (sidenote if u want to play "when is lance secretly turned on by keith" it's an available game this chapter.....)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey babes happy birthday to everybody’s fave lil blue paladin!!  
> I put in a bunch of extra work to get this up on time and to have [some (crappy) art to accompany this monumental day + chapter here on my blog](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/post/163517850323/happy-birthday-my-soft-lil-baby-boy-you-deserve)! I’m currently at a convention and pre-prepared everything to post on time so I can’t respond to comments yet but as always love all of y’all thanks for loving this story as much as I do <3  
> now............ GET READY FOR THE L A N G S T  
> strap urself in boys girls and fellow nb babes and fuckin PREP FOR PAIN AND LONG ASS MONOLOGUING

“What the hell, Lance?”

“What the hell, you!” Lance snarls, and Keith’s hackles are up, ready to fight. But Lance is still facing the door. His fingers are clenched around the handles of his crutches, his shoulders around his ears. Keith can see him trembling.

Anger, it must be. He had to be angry.

“What is going on −”

“ _Stop!_ ” Lance rounds on him.

“Why are you so mad?” Keith yells.

“I don’t fucking know!” Lance screams back. His eyes are red. “Because everybody loves you, everybody cares about you, everybody wants to know you, and you and – and you and Shiro −”

Keith can only stare, fury draining out of him.

“I only...all my life, I wanted to have something – listen, don’t you laugh at me.”

He couldn’t if he tried.

“God, I tried really hard, but I was always the kid who just barely skated past, my brothers and my sisters were all there, succeeding and happy and finding what they were meant to do. Even my younger siblings have their shit figured out – they all have something, something they’re good at. And fuck, two, three years ago, I didn’t have anything else but my family, but the rest of my family had _everyone_ and _everything_ else. So I would just run away, and see if they cared enough to find me.”

Lance presses his fists into his eyes. “And I met Shiro, and he asked me if I was _okay_ , and he wanted to _hear about me_ , and I met Matt and Pidge. And Pidge was a snarky child genius who was about to start at my new high school, and then at school, we met Hunk, happy-go-lucky guy who could build stuff and cook like nobody’s business, and I _had people._ But you know, time wears on, and I’m flunking out, and I’m watching my two straight As-with-honors friends make other friends, and connections, and start planning their futures, and of course, Shiro’s moved on, and I’m happy for them all, so goddamn happy, but I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. I’m wondering why they’re still hanging out with me, and then they’re...not, more and more. They’ve got other people, other things. I’m fading into the background again, and that’s fine, it’s whatever, because they’re important to me. And I want them to be happy, I don’t want to tell them I’m being even dumber than usual and feeling weird. So I just...stop caring, because what’s the point – I’ve been struggling to just keep up my mediocre life.”

Keith wants to do something, anything to show some kind of support, some kind of concern. But Lance isn’t looking at him, he’s lost in his own head − locked to Keith, the key thrown away.

“I start skipping classes, because the teachers think I’m stupid anyway, I stop trying to figure out actual full-time jobs, because all of them think I’m some troublemaker, nobody’s gonna write me a recommendation letter for anything because even if they cared, what would they say? ‘Lance tries really hard but sucks at everything anyway’? So I just stop, and then they get mad at me. Mama and Pidge and Hunk and Shiro, everyone says I’m being stupid, so, naturally, I follow through and go the stupid route of not talking some more, and I don’t talk to anybody for months. And finally, I try to make up and make something out of everything I’ve fucked up. And I’m still the stupid kid who does things for attention and doesn’t care about his future and everyone’s mad at me for that, but I’m starting to fix things and then...here you are.”

Keith doesn’t breathe.

“A kid who jumps into our lives with a bat and a knife, but oh, Shiro and Matt remember you, Shiro loves you, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have a past, you don’t try, you push everyone away, run away, but they all love you. They run after you. My family, everyone. Because you’re special. Beat Lance up, ha ha, it’s fine!” Lance sniffles wetly. “Pidge and Hunk, even. But Shiro, I know he just has to save everyone, find a crying kid by the side of the road and stand them up for a second chance, and then it’s on to the next one. But you – he knows you, you weren’t just another person to be saved like I was.”

He hiccups to a stop and mutters something unintelligible in Spanish, wiping his face. “You like him, don’t you?”

Keith finds his voice after a good minute. “What?”

“Shiro. And he cares about you, a lot.”

Keith is struck dumb. He can only stutter out, “Do _you_ like Shiro?”

“No! I mean...well, everybody likes Shiro, come on, even _Pidge_ who doesn’t think anything but _science_ is sexy can admit he’s pretty hot but...it’s...it’s just... Fuck. I don’t know. I didn’t mean to say that.”

“I don’t like Shiro.”

“Bullshit.” Lance glares.

“No, I – I _did_. Like you said, I’m sure everyone does. He was nice, and he looked after me, I thought he was really...really handsome −” (maybe he still did, but that wasn’t the point) “− but it was a stupid kiddie crush. It was bound to happen, it wasn’t like there was a lot of people I was around who were nice to me.”

Lance is quiet. “What?”

Oh, _shit_.

“I...I mean...”

“No, tell me.” Lance swipes at his eyes and blinks at Keith. “I just spilled my guts, let’s hear it.”

He can’t, he can’t...

“Why aren’t you tucked up nice and cozy at home with some loving, perfect parents, huh?”

He _feels_ himself flinch, and Lance watches it happen. His lips part as he searches Keith’s eyes, but Keith has to look away, has to leave now.

“Wait.” Lance catches his arm, then pulls away again, sticky, semi-dried blood on his hand. “Ah, sorry, sorry! Shit, I’m sorry. Come on, just...let me help clean you up, and then let’s just – sleep, whatever. Dammit, I have work tomorrow. I’m tired. I’m so tired.”

“Me too,” Keith whispers, and lets Lance lead him to the bathroom. 

* * *

 

Lance gets up early, and the only reason Keith knows this is because he’s shaken awake at a quarter to six in the goddamn morning by a presenceless person who returns his exhausted glare with as much annoyed fervor as Keith is throwing down.

“Mama said I should take you with me,” Lance mutters in a voice still thick with sleep, rubbing his eye.

“What?” Keith mumbles intelligently before he flinches away from a sharp flick to his forehead.

“Wake up. I’m helping you job hunt. Up you get, Mullet.”

“Job hunting” means dragging Keith to the coffee shop down by the mall, a tiny, quaint place with classy music burbling from the speakers and tables covered with panels cut from comics and novels and poetry books and a thick layer of sealant. It’s at one of these tables that Lance finally seats Keith at before ambling behind the counter and maneuvering his crutches to grab an apron, carefully ignoring the meaningful side-eye his coworker gives him before tapping her watch.

Thankfully, it’s small enough and far enough away from the mall itself that Keith only finds himself preoccupied with Lance’s coworker’s irritation and the occasional touch of a hurried person’s mind passing by. He’s dropped off on his folded arms and isn’t sure how long he’s been out when Lance is shaking him again. Drowsily, he turns his head to peer up at the clock. A few hours.

Lance is still crouching in front of him, and in a few short hours, he’s transformed from the morning grouch into his grinning self. Keith glowers in response, but Lance’s grin only widens. As if last night had never happened. As if he wants to pretend that, at least.

“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty. I made you something to help ease you back into the world of the living.” He drops a cup next to Keith’s head.

Keith blinks at it and sits up. Suddenly, he feels a lot more awake. “You made it for me?”

“Yeah, I bet Nyma I could guess what you drank.”

“Oh.” Keith’s stomach drops. “So it’s all for a bet.” He wonders, briefly, if turning the drink upside down and watching Lance’s reaction would be worth keeping this disgusting dry taste of sleep in his mouth. But then he thinks of Lance’s outburst last night, and he doesn’t.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that. I’m also just a nice dude who does nice things sometimes! So...why don’t you take an itty-bitty little sip and, y’know, kind of loudly proclaim it’s the best coffee you’ve ever had so that I can get my cash?”

Keith sighs and knocks it back, choking back a harsh grimace at the bitterness.

“Ha!” is shouted from behind the counter, and Lance scowls back at his coworker before turning back to Keith.

“What, not sweet enough? You seem like you wouldn’t like that, but more sugar? Here.” Lance produces a few sugar packets from the pocket of his apron and pours them in as Keith regards the cup warily.

“I think you lost already.”

Lance shrugs, straightening up and winking, tapping Keith’s leg with a crutch. “Guess you’ll just have to pay me back when I get you a job here, huh? The manager’ll be here soon, so don’t go falling back asleep on me.” He turns to head back to the counter when Keith catches his sleeve.

“Lance.”

Lance stops to look back at Keith, who can count what seems like thousands of freckles across his nose, stare into the eyes that had matched the sea yesterday − bright, bright blue, but then red as the sun set – only fleetingly allow himself to want to run his fingers through Lance’s own hair – a little piece sticking out at the back, just out of view of a mirror.

“You can talk to me. If...if you feel alone again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again here's that crying baby boy i made for his birthday i'm v sorry [u can find it here on my blog](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/post/163517850323/happy-birthday-my-soft-lil-baby-boy-you-deserve)  
> *throws every emo thought i’ve ever had into Lance and Keith’s backstories* *tosses in a few more* this is monologue central fuck me up i shouldn’t have written all this but goddamn i couldn’t shut the lance backstory up he is a sad lil insecure string bean  
> be grateful tho when i first wrote it it was very stream of consciousness and going back i broke it up with keith thoughts but it was a GIANT ASS text block so it could’ve been worse y’know  
> also you will pry terrible coffee shop aus from my cold dead hands i’m a slut for coffee & i almost dated a cute barista once so


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shows up a month late with coffee, a disgusting long chapter with basically only fluff, and a healthy love/hate relationship with s3* *almost entirely love tho*  
> also....um....SPOILERS ISH - like lance did the same insecure af vent to keith in show as in fic....keith was even less able to figure out how to people and didn’t know how to comfort lance but uh....ignore it we’re fanficin  
> also finally we got our tru mvp the most gorgeous of them all up in here about time

Keith swirls his cup, staring into its dark contents. It’s gone cold now, he hasn’t touched it since Lance first gave it to him.

He’d smiled – Lance had – a tiny, thin, only-half-real smile that didn’t crinkle his nose and push freckles up on freckles, that didn’t reach his eyes when Keith had said that. Then he’d turned away and gone back to work without another word.

Keith shouldn’t have said it, really. Lance had just needed to vent – who knew how many years he’d been holding it in – and Keith had been...there. To yell at. For kind of a good reason, really, everyone had been so nice to Keith, had welcomed him without worry about the actual type of person he was. When he’d introduced himself the way he had.

He’s tired again. There are more patrons now, people hopped up on caffeine, bouncing feet and tapping fingers, people in a hurry, people irritated and exhausted. He wraps his hands around the nape of his neck and presses his forehead into the table. Just breathe, breathe. He’s managed to handle _living_ in a busy household, he can spend a bit of time in a small coffee shop. He can, he can.

He’d just wanted to...let Lance know he wasn’t going to pretend nothing had happened. He wasn’t going to let all those words Lance had entrusted him with just disappear, however reluctantly they’d been spoken. They were – important. But he’d screwed it up. He wasn’t a confidant, he was a passerby to Lance’s final crack and break, there to simply witness before moving on. Lance didn’t want him to remember at all.

“Hello, Lance, Nyma!” A jaunty, loud and accented voice reaches his ears above the dull chatter, over by the counter, and the familiar cadence of Lance’s confident tones in response had Keith trying to focus, especially when the owner of the new voice seems to sharpen, directing attention towards him.

He scrubs sweaty palms on his jeans, head still on the table, and hisses out a breath through clenched teeth before pressing himself back up into a sitting position.

Lance and the assumed manager are approaching his table. Keith doesn’t need to glance in the manager’s direction (although he does, for the briefest moment) to know that the ginger-haired and bushily-mustached man is actually beaming with quite sincere happiness. Keith instead latches onto Lance, whose eyes don’t seem to hold the same easy assurance they usually do, but he’s too hard to read as he turns his gaze back on his companion with his own grin, avoiding Keith’s intent look.

“Coran, this is Keith. He’s staying with me for a while, so you know that he’ll get to work on time, just like me!”

Coran chuckles, tugging at his mustache. “Well, Lance, if that’s your sales pitch, I’m afraid hiring him might be rather foolish! I can’t recall the last time you were here on time! Between that and your injury, if Keith follows in your footsteps −”

“All right, all right,” Lance interrupts, flapping his hand. Maybe a flash of hurt in his eyes, maybe Keith’s imagining it. “I get it. You can talk to Shiro, okay? Shiro loves him, he’ll sing his praises. I’m sure Keith’ll be the pinnacle of responsibility.”

“Ah! Maybe I will call him up! I haven’t talked to my niece in too long, after all.”

“Coran is Allura’s uncle,” Lance says, obviously to Keith, but Keith might as well not be present. Weakly, he nods as Lance continues to stare anywhere but at him.

Coran, however, is oblivious, and speaks directly to Keith, still almost sickeningly jovial. “Yes, she put in a wonderful word for Lance’s hiring, really talked him up. He certainly brings an energy to the shop, that’s for sure!” Lance grins, his chest puffing out a bit, before Coran’s next words bring a sure and steady deflation. “Could stand to work a bit more and goof off a little less, perhaps!”

“You were talking about hiring me,” Keith redirects, fingers twisting into the hem of his shirt. Anything to get off this topic, even if he’d rather not speak.

“Yes, yes, perhaps you’d like to start training today? We can see if you’d be a good fit? If it all goes well, I can try to wrangle some hours similar to Lance’s if you’re going to be carpooling!”

“Yes,” Keith says weakly, because he’s ready to work, definitely, to deal with full shifts of this draining whirlpool of people.

“Delightful!” Coran claps his hands together in actual, literal glee. “I’m sure you’ll do wonderfully!”

Keith wants to throw up.

 _Great._

* * *

 

“Training” means being taught to man the register and try to muster a smile at people who often feel anything but smiley. A patient customer here, there, but the second they notice Nyma − Lance’s coworker with crazy blond hair down to her waist – peering over his shoulder to help him punch in the right buttons, impatience and irritation filter in. The newbie is serving them, and they don’t like it, it’s taking a second too long, he’s always one wrong button press away from a full-on glare. It hurries him along, which only means more mistakes, which means more anger, which...

But when the line dwindles and Keith can lean back against the counter and catch his breath, it means he can watch Lance. Even on crutches, it’s something to watch him mix complicated orders, and even more so to watch him serve them up. It’s never just the call of a name when he passes patrons their drinks, it’s a solid grin, sometimes a wink, a passing compliment. Customers bloom under his attention, flattered and happy, occasionally lingering, and he chats away to admirers at the bar while he works.

There’s something utterly fascinating about the boy with no mind to pick behind the smile – a smile Keith has somehow learned has been hiding so much. Because of course it would be the one he can’t read that has the most secrets, the one that Keith actually wants to know is the one silent to him. Instead, he has to focus on the woman tapping her foot impatiently on the other side of the counter, radiating extreme irritation that he didn’t hear her ask for a medium soy latte with no foam the first time.

By the time Lance clocks them both out, Coran is there, beaming and promising that Keith’s brand-new career is looking to go swimmingly, and Keith is dead on his feet.

“Mama gave me money so we can buy you new clothes,” Lance tosses over his shoulder as he leads them out of the shop.

Keith grasps at the interaction, wishing his head wasn’t spinning with exhaustion. “Oh?”

“Yeah, let’s go crazy, Mullet. Dress you like you really are out of the eighties. Make a day of it.”

_Or maybe we could just go home..._

But with even the slightest possibility of reconciliation between them hanging in the balance, Keith _can’t_ say no.

The trek towards the glass storefronts populated by mannequin after mannequin, the sidewalks peopled by too many...well, people, has Keith sweating. The giant doors swinging shut behind them both marks the closing of his prison with a _whoosh_.

 _It could be worse, could be worse,_ he tries to think as crowds stream by, but this is so much worse than the coffee shop, he can’t hear himself, his legs are shaking and he can’t move, he could scream and not even make a dent in this deafening space –

A hand in his. Keith breathes.

“You’re good, man. It’s okay.” Keith thinks maybe Lance’s big brother voice has slipped into place, the one he’d heard in the entryway with Rafael and Mari, but now it’s soothing, no hint of teasing. Serious blue eyes, intent on him, a hint of maybe even worry.

“I’m sorry. You wanna go home?”

Keith shakes his head. _Just...this._ Lance looking at him again, silencing it all, calming him down.

Lance searches his eyes for a moment, then slowly nods, the slightest smile gracing his face. He doesn’t let go − awkwardly lacing Keith’s hand through his crutches − through browsing all his favorite stores, through piling more weird items of clothing into shopping baskets than Keith thinks he needs. A brief parting as they approach changing rooms, a separation of slightly sweaty palms for Keith to quickly, clumsily close the door behind himself and yank on things Lance had chosen for him.

“Show me,” Lance would always call, and Keith would take a shaky, uncomfortable breath before throwing open the door, dressed all too often in pastel shorts and soft, loose tank tops – maybe a flowery snapback if Lance had found one to giggle at and toss on top of their pile − feeling like the most out of place American Eagle model.

There’d be people in the stores, and it would be an uncontrollable itch in the back of his head, but Lance would hold out a hand to him, and Keith would reach out as well, and their fingers would interlock – a grounding grasp. Keith would watch Lance’s face and inhale, exhale, as he examined him, head to toe. It might not quite be true resolution, but it feels like it when Lance grins, maybe even tries not to laugh at Keith’s awkward gawkiness in the clothes.

“Cute. Totally my style. Not you though, Emo. _Fine_. Let’s find the Hot Topics of this place.”

It takes a few tries, but they slowly amass a collection of shopping bags – Lance rolls his eyes and good naturedly grumbles that they mostly look like the exact same clothes Keith already wears, plain dark T shirts and jeans, occasionally sporting a simple graphic alien or a few words that Lance insists on – when Keith sees it.

“Listen, one last thing before we go, it may be summer now, but you’re gonna need a jacket, buddy. And I will _not_ let you buy some basic-emo-bitch black jacket and call it good. _Whoaaaa −_ ”

Keith almost lets go, but ends up tugging Lance back instead, peering into a window at the display.

“What – what, are you looking at that abomination?” Lance slowly hops to his side, pulling his crutches along and following Keith’s gaze.

“That one.”

“You’re looking at a fucking cropped jacket. And it’s not even a cute cropped jacket. That’s....no. I won’t have it.”

“Please.”

A disgusted noise, a whine, a groan, Lance tugs him into the store, and a few minutes later, Keith is the proud owner of a new red and white coat.

“The collarrrrr,” Lance complains as he side-eyes Keith again while they walk among parked cars. “It’s hideous.”

Keith looks down at it, adjusting the very collar Lance was bashing with a bag-filled hand and grinning. “I like it.”

There’s a strange choking noise, and Keith peers over at the trailing Lance, who looks a little red as he stares anywhere but at Keith.

“What?”

“No, just...you, uh... You know what, forget it. Let’s talk about something else.” Lance pulls out his keys and lets go of Keith to unlock his car. Keith flexes the hand used to Lance’s around it.

Lance adjusts his mirror as Keith opens his own door, staring curiously at him, and looks over. “So, what’s it like having a sugar daddy?”

“W-what?”

Lance shoots a smirk at him as he spins in his seat to back out. “Shiro’s paying for all your clothes...what’s next, Keith?” 

* * *

 

It’s dinner time when they pull into Lance’s driveway, and it’s intuitive, the way their hands find each other as Keith rounds the car and Lance gets out. It’s going almost unnoticed until Lance unlocks the door and then looks down and clears his throat, letting Keith go.

That makes sense, Keith reasons through tired and almost... _lonely_ irritation as the regular McClain babble hits him as they step in. They can’t exactly hold hands through dinner. That would be awkward to maneuver around with, and just...weird. The family would ask questions.

It doesn’t mean he doesn’t still want to reach out to grab one of the hands wrapped around crutch handles, or resent the fact that Lance doesn’t want him to.

Keith is quiet through dinner – he’s reached his limit hours and hours ago and the family’s chatter in and out of his head is too much – and spoons rice into his mouth as he tries to surreptitiously watch Lance interacting with his family with new eyes. He thinks he’s too tired to be properly subtle, though. A touch of suspicion to Mr. McClain’s brief observance of him, a hint of curiosity from Mrs. McClain. Keith pretends his focus is solely on his dinner plate until they turn their attention elsewhere.

For someone who professed to being scared his family would forget about him, Lance is the life of the dinner table. Or perhaps, Keith muses, getting beans on his shirt, it’s _because_ of that that Lance is the loudest of all, the one who cracks jokes more than anyone, teasing all his siblings with a giant grin. If Keith had thought the combination of Mrs. McClain and Gwen had been lively the first night, Lance outshines them both by a long shot. The question is, is it real? Keith can’t say, but he can guess.

He does know that Lance wouldn’t volunteer the information to him in a million years.

Lance quiets down when they head upstairs, and Keith is glad, because the day has hit him harder than a train. While he’s learned he much prefers a happy Lance to one ignoring him, or glaring at him, or sobbing because of something Keith had said, he thinks he needs to sleep for a year. Besides, he’s still riding that annoyance kick from earlier. He just wanted to touch...

He’s not a junkie.

He needs to sleep. Now.

Only when they reach the landing, childish shrieks and giggles assault Keith’s eardrums, and a space-blanket-covered creature of suspiciously similar size to Mari streaks past, followed by a slightly slower but still laughing Rafael, and back down the stairs they go.

“They just...they just stole my bedding,” groans Lance in disbelief, stopping to rub his hands through his hair. “Shit.”

Keith grunts and opens Lance’s door. He’ll be charitable to the man with the broken leg in the morning. Lance can survive without a blanket. Right now, Keith wants to crash.

And crash he does, right into the air mattress and through its dubious suspension into the hard floor. “Fuck,” he mumbles into his pillow, and listens to the sound of crutches clicking across the floor in a defeated manner before Lance, too, flops onto his bed. After a minute, he sighs and heaves himself back up to disappear into the bathroom.

Keith can’t be bothered to do more than lazily kick his shoes off and toss away his new jacket, and he’s just slipping into sleep when Lance finally comes back in, shocking him back awake.

The light flicks off and the bed creaks as Lance settles in. There’s wonderful, blissful quiet – the others have been settling into dreamworlds – and darkness. Keith is ready to sleep, but Lance’s breaths are starting to come in an odd shaky pattern.

“Aren’t you c-cold?” The voice is soft, but breaks the silence like a thunderclap in the empty room. Keith suppresses a groan.

“No.” He’s not under his own blanket but he’s been colder. It’s not that bad at all. He’s really, really fucking tired though.

“Are you sure?” Lance sounds skeptical.

“It’s fine.”

Quiet again. Thank god.

“...I’m cold.”

Keith opens his eyes. “Well, I’m sorry about that?”

“Don’t get snarky with me. Why are you so angry?”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Keith mumbles angrily.

“I don’t...well, you’re not cold, asshole, so...?”

“What, do you want me to _cuddle_ with you?”

Silence again. Keith suddenly feels more awake.

“Are you serious?”

Keith thinks maybe Lance’s voice is a little unsure when he speaks again. “I mean, you said it. You’re on our air mattress that I _know_ has a leak somewhere. You’re warm. And you’re the one who has this weird obsession with, uh, me touching you, so, maybe this would be...good...?”

Well, that was a step too far. “What the shit, Lance?”

“Just give me your blanket then! _¡Mierda!_ It’s been a long day for me too! I don’t know!”

Keith gives up and sits up, brushing bedhead out of his eyes. Lance has turned to face the wall, arms folded, curled in a shivering ball.

Well, he can’t say why he’s really been irritated. But he can sure address the elephant in the room. “You’re angry at me.”

Lance rolls over. Keith can just make out a glare and what almost looks like a faint blush. “Well, yeah! You’ve apparently got _so_ much body heat going on, but you won’t share it!”

“No, I mean...you’ve _been_ angry at me. From day one, which, you’ve said _why_ , but. And then today, too. Why do you want – that?”

A shuddery breath. “Maybe I’m – trying to make amends, I guess. It’s not your fault that I’m stupid and...and insecure and – Well, shit, I just...I need to be nicer to my friends.”

“Friends?”

“...Yeah?”

“We’re friends?”

“I wouldn’t say that to any other guy who broke my leg, but yeah, Mullet, we’re friends. I told you my whole sob story, after all. I let you sleep in my room, use my precious hair care products. What, you don’t think so?”

The words catch in his throat. “You just said...at the beach...”

Lance shuts up for a minute, then croaks a bitter laugh. “See? I’m such a _cabrón_. I say shit and I don’t mean it. A fucking idiot.”

Keith huffs and yanks on his blanket, standing and draping it over Lance.

“Oh.” A disappointment-soaked word.

Keith growls and pokes at his shoulder. “Scoot.”

“ _Oh_.” Lance’s eyes are wide as he scoots back, allowing room for Keith to crawl in next to him. Yes, much comfier than essentially the floor. Much...much comfier.

Keith peers up into Lance’s face and narrows his eyes in warning as he tangles his feet with Lance’s cold one. “If you kick me in the middle of the night, I’m relegating you to the air mattress.”

A nervous chuckle, a flash of teeth. “Same to you, Mullet. But listen...are you wearing jeans to bed?”

“Shut up.”

He likes that he can pick out freckles even in the near complete dark. He likes the warm breath playing on his face. He likes the cold skin he’s helping to warm. He thinks maybe his face might be radiating half the heat he’s producing right now, though, so he turns it down, away from where it might be noticed. The bed is too short for Lance, but it’s also narrow. Keith is so close to his chest, close enough to bury his head in it. So cautiously, carefully, nervously gauging, he does.

Lance exhales against him, and then there’s an arm around him. Lance murmurs into his hair. “Keith...thank you. For everything.”

Keith falls asleep listening to nothing but Lance’s heartbeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when u try to work hella hard to get up a chapter on a special fandom day while ur also super busy and there’s almost radio silence on it........like boiii did i hurt lance too much i’m sorry i lov him  
> Bonus  
> if u want [basically no plot & nothing but klance vampire sin check out my newest lil fic here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11777676) ;)  
> or if u want [gay trash dancing to trash music....hit my keith-cosplaying-ass up](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/post/164537336393/much-more-of-a-lance-songbut-maybe-keith)


	11. Chapter 11

The next morning is...weird. The alarm that usually doesn’t wake him is right next to his ear, and he shifts in tired irritation against the body curled next to him. His face is pressed to a collarbone; Lance’s slightly overlarge sleep shirt having fallen over his shoulder, leaving skin for a sleeping Keith to unconsciously nestle against. His feet are still twined together with Lance’s singular exposed one in the sheets, Lance’s toes no longer icy.

Motionless in the stillness (aside from the goddamn beeping in his ear), Keith allows his eyes to wander over the lightest speckles dusting Lance’s neck, his shoulder, the peek of his chest. He’s so close, he thinks his eyelashes might be fluttering against skin. He can smell the fancy bodywash he’d once found in the shower, sniffed, and left alone. The citrusy scent hadn’t been appealing to him at the time, but on Lance, it’s nice. He inhales as quietly as he can and stiffens a little as Lance mumbles a noise, head shifting. Keith’s hand is bunched up in the fabric on Lance’s chest − when did that happen – and Lance opens an eye to peer down at it, then at him.

“Mmm. Morning.”

“Hi.”

He inhales again, sharp, surprised, as Lance suddenly rolls into his space, leaning over him, an arm reaching around, but it’s to turn off the alarm, and Keith is left feeling warm and foolish as Lance leans back, stretching and squeezing his eyes shut. “Ready to get back to the daily grind?”

“Uh...” He’s glad Lance isn’t looking because he thinks he’s flushing at everything: the closeness, the expanse of bronze skin radiating heat that had just been in his face – Lance’s shirt gapping as he leaned – the hoarse deepness of Lance’s voice that vibrates through him at this lack of distance. If anything, he curiously feels even more scatterbrained than when he’s dealing with his usual condition, his heart skipping in his chest like a nervous rabbit’s as Lance snickers. He’s hyperaware of everything, even as he actually  _ feels _ nothing. It’s just  _ weird _ .

Fuck.

“Get it?  _ Coffee _ grind. God, I’m funny, huh Mullet?”

“Nah,” he tries not to choke through a heavy  _ thud thud thud _ in his throat, as Lance mock-glares and flicks him in the cheek.

“I’ll have you know there are  _ plenty _ of pretty ladies that would beg to differ. My humor is a prime wooing technique.”

“Y-yeah? They must have been, uh, desperate.” Not cool,  _ not cool _ .

He’s  _ fine _ .

A narrowing of the eyes. Playful, Keith thinks, but maybe not, maybe that’s something else running underneath as Lance shoves at him to get out of the bed. “All right, I get too much shit from my siblings to have Emo McMulletson trying to roast me too. I don’t see  _ you _ getting frisky with any cute girls because of a bit of well-timed comedy!”

_ Yeah, you really wouldn’t, Lance. _

Keith rolls away – ignores the resurgence as they separate − to stand and stretch, watching carefully as Lance does the same, leaning on the bed with a hand to steady himself as he reaches for a crutch. A corner of his mouth is tugging downward as he comes out of cricking his neck.

Keith can push, but not like this. Lance is good-humored, but not invulnerable to barbs. And he likes their dynamic.

Keith can do that dynamic.

“Hey.”

Lance looks up, blue eyes crystal clear.

He’s not even simply indulging him. It’s true. “You’re funny.”

A gulp, the start of what could be an almost flattered tiny smile.

“That joke was just terrible.”

Outrage, a furious grab for his other crutch. “ _ Keith! _ ”

Keith runs, laughing.

* * *

They’re almost late for Keith’s second day. They would have been late but Keith drags Lance out of the bathroom before he can start on yet another step of primping.

Keith hasn’t exactly developed a routine, but working feels weird too, like this morning. It’s not bad, just disorienting. Lance seems like he’s smiling wider, laughing harder, and he’s looking over at Keith today, inviting him into conversations now.

Every once in a while, discreetly, when Keith’s head won’t quiet down and his breathing gets especially choppy after a bad customer or a rush, Lance even reaches over underneath the counter tangles his fingers with Keith’s.

He feels light-headed and his stomach is fluttering, and it’s all very, very confusing, he can’t think in the oddest way. So when a much-too-short, messy-haired, bespectacled person peers up at him with a raised eyebrow and a touch of sass bumping into him, he doesn’t even register it and merely reaches for a cup, mumbling, “What can I get you?”

“How about the largest cup of no-nonsense coffee you have and also, maybe acknowledgment that your house-invading buddy is standing in front of you? Happy new job, I guess.”

“Pidge! I didn’t know you were stopping by!” Lance slides over from where he’s been engaged in a heated discussion with a random customer about the latest episode of some TV show to make grabby hands at his tired friend.

“Hunk is meeting me here soon too.”

Keith must have been really distracted by listening in to the conversation, because suddenly Pidge’s aura  _ hits _ him, and he has to quickly pull himself up on the counter to keep his knees from going out. How he could have just missed their fatigue, he doesn’t know. They’re sapping everything from him now, exhausted.

“How’s your internship going, by the way, zombie? Getting in with all the techies?” Lance asks as Pidge obligingly raises their hand for a fist bump.

“I think I’ll think on it more kindly when my blood stream is 90% caffeine, thanks.”

“ _ Por supuesto _ , my dude! What’d they order, Keith?”

Still weak, Keith pushes the cup he’d absently sharpied with Pidge’s simple order at him.

“Hey, man. You okay?” Quiet concern, under Lance’s breath. Keith looks up at him and nods wordlessly. Lance smiles, worry still seeming to cloud his brow a little.

“So, uh. Things are all good on the home front, then?” Pidge’s eyes are flicking between them when Keith turns back to them. Wary, nervous optimism. “You’ve kissed and made up and all that?”

“H-ha,” Lance sputters, turning away to a machine. “I don’t trust Keith’s dental hygiene enough for that.”

Keith’s lip might be splitting as he worries it between his teeth.

“But you’re not shoving him around anymore, right? Because...that was kinda fucked up, Lance.”

Lance’s stiffening shoulders are masked by the loud arrival of a warm blanket of a giant person, reaching down to envelop Pidge in a big hug and grinning widely at Keith and Lance. Or, Lance’s back. “Guys! Hey!”

Pidge grunts but hugs Hunk’s arms around their shoulders nonetheless, smiling a secret, tiny smile as Hunk’s worry flips on like a faucet on full blast, drowning Keith.

“Whoa, Keith, are you doing okay? We haven’t really heard from either of you since the beach, not a text or anything. We didn’t want to bug you, but we were worried! The only reason we knew you’d both be here is because Allura let it slip you’d been hired!”

Pidge’s eyes widen in shock and they slap at Hunk’s arm. “Don’t reveal our ulterior motives! This was an undercover operation!”

“Oops.”

They both seem to be expecting a certain reaction from Lance, and glance at him, waiting for it, but a half-chuckle that quickly peters out is not it. His back is still to them as he wipes down the counter.

Hunk’s eyes are those of a kicked puppy, and Pidge’s eyebrows are drawing together.

Hunk looks at Keith first, then Pidge’s eyes slide to him. He’s the one behind the counter with Lance, living with him. They need him to help.

It isn’t just their fear that’s rolling through him, he’s scared too. He hates tamped down Lance. But he thinks...he thinks he knows why now.

“Lance...”

He’s reaching for Lance’s shoulder when Lance turns around, a fake smile plastered across his face. “Here’s your coffee, Pidge.”

“Hey, Lance.” Nyma has finished up at the other end of the counter and sashayed her way almost past when she leans in to murmur in his ear. She grins at him and continues on, towards the back. “Bye, Keith. I’m off.”

He doesn’t quite know what the flash of interest was just before she stopped to whisper to Lance, and Pidge and Hunk are equally as confused, but none of them expect Lance to stuff his clean up rag in his apron and gather up his crutches to head after her. He seems a little dull eyed as he turns to Keith.

“I’m going on break. I’ll go tell Coran to come help. See you guys later.”

All three of them stare after him, before Pidge breaks the silence. “What the hell was that?”

Keith wants to go after him, because this isn’t his conversation to have. He can’t tell Lance’s best friends he’s been hiding his feelings of inadequacy from them. But Lance ran for a reason.

He avoids Pidge’s look and pulls out a cup. “What would you like, Hunk?”

* * *

By the time Lance appears again, a dispirited Hunk and Pidge have both said goodbye – Pidge headed off to their internship, Hunk to volunteering at the local homeless shelter. Coran nods and returns to the back as Lance slowly reties his apron and heads back to his spot, messing with his hair. He doesn’t meet Keith’s eyes, and settles in to continue making the line of drinks as the people waiting dwindle.

Finally he sets down the last drink in the line and Keith reaches to tug on his sleeve. “You need to talk to them.”

Lance adds whipped cream. “About what?”

“About everything. Look at me.”

He does, and Keith can’t read his eyes. The weirdness is gone, replaced by an overwhelming protectiveness. He needs to let go of...whatever that was, because this is so, so much more important. That Lance  _ understands _ . “They’re worried about you.”

Lance huffs a laugh and folds his arms over his crutch handles. “They’re right, though. I hurt people. I hurt  _ you _ . I know it was fucked up, I  _ just _ fuck things up. Everyone was having fun at the beach until I pulled that shit. Pidge got that internship while I wasn’t talking to them, weighing them down. Hunk gets so busy trying to make people feel better that he doesn’t even take care of himself when others are feeling bad. If I said anything...well. They’re better off –” He pauses, and finishes in a choked voice. “They’re better off without me.”

“You know that isn’t true,” Keith says fiercely, because there’s nothing like Lance to brighten up a room with his friends in it, or honestly anyone, for that matter. And he says as much, and Lance is squeezing his eyes shut against shaky breaths and a nose that he wipes on his sleeve, shaking his head.

And Keith wishes he could just tell him that he knows this with complete certainty, but he can’t, so he just says, “They’re happy with you, Lance. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen how they get around you, but they love you. Everybody does. And I  _ know _ you never see them when they’re worried, but they get worried about you, a lot. Because they care about you, and they want to know what’s going on. They deserve to know. Here.”

His mouth is a little dry, but he reaches into Lance’s pocket and pulls out his phone to press it into his hand. They’re close, he’s looking up into sapphire eyes that seem like they’re searching his for answers to the universe, maybe, and he plants his feet to gather courage he doesn’t have. “Text them. Tell them you want to talk tomorrow. Tell them it’s important. And tomorrow, on your break,  _ tell them _ .”

And Lance does. He looks down to the screen in his hand and slowly, he unlocks it and he types, and Keith hears the text send, and then Lance is looking back up. His lips are pulled tight and tense, but a corner is turning up as he tucks the phone back into his pocket.

“You solve all my problems, don’t you?”

Keith smiles his own tight smile back. “Tell me another and I will.”

Lance taps a finger against his mouth, eyes narrowed in thought and still on Keith. But playful Lance is back again, a spark in blue depths as he hems and haws. “No, I have to return the favor.”

“Oh?” Keith folds his arms, fighting back a real grin now. “What problems do I have?”

Lance’s eyes sharpen for a moment, and Keith feels a stab of nerves, because he doesn’t want this to be serious, he was just playing, but then it’s back to an easy, lazy smile.

“So I have to play Sherlock Holmes? Let’s see. Quiet, avoiding people, bags under your eyes…you’re tired,  _ mi amigo _ ! And I know just the thing!” He gestures with a flourish to the coffee machine, and Keith rolls his eyes.

“I thought you didn’t know what I drank.”

“I’ll just have to do some mind reading.”

Keith stiffens as Lance leans in closer to his face, pressing fingers to his own temples, closing his eyes. After a minute, he opens them and suddenly, inexplicably, boops Keith’s nose.

He turns to the coffee machine without another word, leaving Keith blinking.

“The fuck was that?”

Lance grins at him over his shoulder. “Mind reading.”

Thank god it wasn’t actually. Because for a moment, it had been weird again.

* * *

The drink Lance makes for him is also not to Keith’s taste – it’s  _ too much _ sugar and fluff, lots of addons that mask that it’s actually coffee. Lance pouts that his bet with Nyma is still unrealized as Keith nearly spits out his first sip again. But at least it has Keith buzzing for the rest of the day.

Lance’s blanket has been returned and Keith’s air mattress is fine when he first steps into the room after work, but when he comes back after a shower and sits on it, suddenly it’s deflating at a rapid pace with a faint squeaking.

“Oh no,” says Lance with little inflection from his own bed, staring intently at the book he’s reading. “It sounds like your mattress finally gave up.”

Keith finds the hole in the plastic – it’s a tear that looks almost like it could have been ripped by a car key, big enough that it has him sitting back on his heels and looking up at Lance.

“Oh no,” he echoes.

Lance lets the book rest on his chest and eyes Keith. “Well, Mullet Boy?”

“Well what?”

“You have something to ask me?”

Keith considers him. “Nah. Good night.”

He flops down on the broken, empty mattress and pulls the blanket over himself, chewing back a laugh at the wounded scoff from up above. “I call mullets like I see ’em, no need to be so cold –”

“All right, all right.” Keith rolls to crawl over to the bed and up onto it, but now Lance is slapping at him.

“No, no, I’m not sharing anymore, I’m offended. Your bed privileges are revoked.”

“What happened to me solving all your problems? You thanking me for everything?”  _ What happened to all that cuddling? _

Lance narrows his eyes at him. “Fine. No jeans.”

Keith narrows his eyes right back. “What am I going to wear?”

“Whatever you want,  _ tonto _ ! Strip to your boxers, or steal my pajamas. Just not denim! It scrapes me and I’ve already been forced to deal with one leg out of skin care commission.”

With an eye roll masking a bit of self-consciousness, Keith tugs off the pants in question and turns off the light, tucking himself in.

“I can’t believe we didn’t get you pajamas,” Lance complains. “Now I have to deal with sweaty, hairy legs – ow!”

Keith had kicked him.

“Shit! That hurt! Breaking both my legs? Low blow!”

“Shh.” Keith’s nose skims skin as he tiredly hushes, and for a moment, he doesn’t register more than Lance has suddenly gone silent with startling abruptness, but their noses are brushing and their faces are  _ that _ close on the pillow, and Lance’s expression isn’t one of over exaggerated pain, or teasing. Keith doesn’t know  _ what _ it is, just that they’re lying there, staring at each other, too, too close and this is not good, but he also couldn’t move for the world.

Lance breaks first, rolling onto his back with obvious effort, eyes flicking away, clearing his throat.

They’re still touching, leg to leg, Keith’s lifeline to the world of normal silences and lack of other people remains unbroken, but he can’t get his own head to shut up all night.

* * *

He’s humming with false energy when they get into work, jumping at every move Lance makes, trembling with others’ whispers customer after customer after customer.

Lance is distracted too, so distracted, he seems not to notice Keith’s own distraction. He taps his fingers against every surface they come into contact with, bouncing his wrist to pat pat pat at his crutch’s handle. Keith only needs to glance once at the nerves playing across Lance’s face every time the door jingles to know why. Why he keeps wringing his rag between his hands, why his hair is never neat enough for his wandering fingers, why his full lower lip is about to start bleeding between his teeth.

Keith is in his head when he breaks down, Lance is all frantic, bubbling kinetic energy. He’s a whirlwind screaming  _ flee, run, gone _ . A physical manifestation.

The scraping of his nails against the peeling underside of the countertop is stilled by Keith’s hand, and even as cool, quiet relief trickles through his own body, relaxing tense shoulders and smoothing over zipping fast thoughts, Lance seemingly breathes properly for the first time since stepping in the door.

He stills, fingers clenching into a loose fist beneath Keith’s, closing his eyes. Keith watches him inhale, exhale, the door opens with the announcement of the bell.

Lance’s eyes flash open to meet with Pidge’s and Hunk’s.

Keith squeezes his hand and lets him go, and then follows what feels like the busiest time he’s had yet at the coffee shop, trying to watch the three tucked away in the corner while simultaneously being bombarded by customers demanding drinks.

One minute, he’s watching them, then looking away to take an order, and the next, all three have disappeared. He’s searching when hands grab him from behind and whirl him around, tugging him up in a giant hug.

“Fuck, Keith! Jesus...I did it!”

Even Lance looks shocked at himself, eyes wild and wide, but a grin plastered across his face as he starts to let Keith go.

“I...I told them.”

Keith opens his mouth to say something like he’s proud, or Lance was brave, or how much he likes this windswept, bright Lance over a crumpling, sobbing one, but...

“You look happy.” Nyma is leaning against the doorway, her own grin tilting her mouth sideways. Her apron is in her hand, ready to hang back up. She’s about to head out.

Lance is laughing as he limps over to swing her around in a circle. “As a matter of fact, I am!”

“Good. Let’s talk about it over the end of your break?” She gestures over her shoulder, and Lance nods with a flash of teeth.

“Sure, sure!”

He turns to ever-so-briefly shoot a finger gun over his shoulder at Keith before hurrying after Nyma, leaving Keith alone to wait for Coran, the bitter weight of unspoken words catching his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [EDIT: HAVE THE NEW ONESHOT OF LANCE GETTING COMFORT BABES](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12091389)  
>  fuck i’m tired but comments make me cry happily so maybe leave some for my birthday on the 4th??? validation for an insecure, validation-starved 20 year old is the best present thx babes bye


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!! i'm alive!!  
>  didn’t want to tag it because spoilers but yike there’s some lance/other character up here fyi  
> also a bit of underage drinkin  
> & as always I know jack shit about spanish & cuba and all that i try to do research and talk to people but please correct mistakes thx

It’s past time for Keith’s break, and Lance hasn’t come back. Coran is even noticing his jitters, because he finally claps a hand on Keith’s shoulder accompanied by a wave of sympathy.

“Go ahead and get him, my boy.”

So Keith goes. Nyma takes her breaks out in the back to smoke, and Lance followed her, so that makes sense, maybe they’re talking while she smokes, but they’re not.

He knows she’s preoccupied with...something, engrossed in a haze that definitely isn’t concentration or listening, but when he opens the door, he isn’t expecting to find brown, freckled hands wrapped up in long blond hair – Nyma is pressing Lance to the wall, her own hands clenched in his shirt, and they’re kissing.

Not just kissing, they’re making out. And while he can’t read Lance, he knows that Nyma is caught up in it, and Keith is frozen in the doorway, watching with his own nausea rising in his stomach, choking his throat, and he swallows and tries to close the door but he can’t.

Nyma breaks first, pulling back, reaching into her pocket for a cigarette, which she places between her lips.

And Keith has quietly closed the door by then, and breathes, once, twice, three times, opens the door again, and Lance’s eyes are flicking up to meet his as he readjusts his crutches. Nyma has gone to sit on a small pile of cinderblocks to drag on tobacco smoke, a flicker of red-orange as she, too, looks up at him. Warm and content, but it feels like a bitter fire stoked in Keith’s gut as it translates to him.

Lance’s grin is curling across his face once more, a little sheepish as he pushes off the wall to stumble to stand in front of Keith. “ _Perdón_. It’s your break, isn’t it? I’ll head in.” He reaches up to run his hand through his messy hair, and Keith remembers yesterday, neatening himself up then, breaking with Nyma then, too, and is this a thing? Are they _a thing_ , and Keith has just been...stupid?

Lance’s hand on Keith’s shoulder, lips at his ear. Lips that had just been locked with Nyma’s. Keith suppresses a sick shudder.

“Keith, thank you. Thank you so much. Today is...great. I feel so much lighter. And it’s thanks to you.”

And his smile, for a moment, as he leans back once more, is soft and just for Keith, his eyes seem to be searching Keith’s as he pats Keith’s shoulder gently, and he vanishes inside, and Keith is left alone with his other coworker.

He just...he just saw that. That just happened.

Slowly, stiffly, he walks to lean against the cinderblocks next to her and stares at his feet. He can feel her examining him curiously, blowing out smoke, and it only takes her a few moments before realization spreads. Of course she can read him. He’s behaving like an open book. He _is_ an idiot.

“You saw, didn’t you?”

He looks up at her. She pinches her cig between sharp purple nails, eyes narrowed at him. A hint of pity worms its way through the realization, and Keith tries to make his eyes hard and uncaring, he doesn’t care, why would he?

“Sweetheart, we have fun when I’m between boyfriends. Lance indulges me.”

Keith tries to exhale. Her smoke makes him cough when he takes it in, and he turns away.

“Do you need your own bit of fun? I can set you up. Sorry, I’m not sure if Lance would be interested, but I can think of someone who might...”

“Nyma. Time to go.” A head pokes around the corner of the building, and Nyma smiles, dropping the cigarette to grind under her foot and saunter up to the newcomer.

“Speak of the devil. My brother, Rolo. Rolo, Keith is cute, right?”

Rolo blinks and peers at Keith, a small, easy smile breaking across his face. His hair is slightly shaggy, a whisper of stubble on his chin: a chill, lazy, surfer vibe to him. Well-muscled, a broad chest. What Keith would think might be his type. He doesn’t know. His face is burning.

“Hell yeah.” False enthusiasm, convincing though. Nyma’s brother is hiding his boredom.

“You’d show him a good time?”

“Sure. Anything you’d be up for, babe.”

“No thanks,” Keith says. Even if it means not taking his break at all and going back to face Lance, he’ll turn right back around and go inside.

“Why don’t you two go get dinner after your shift is over? You seem like the wine and dine type, Keith. Forget Lance.”

“Yeah, come on.” Rolo’s smile is persuasive, and Nyma’s is pleased. Sickly sweet. Keith feels sick.

Does she even care about Lance, really? Because he could swear this passing off of him to her brother carries more easy convenience than anything.

Is it his place to care if she cares or not?

No. No, it really isn’t.

Lance can kiss whoever he wants to. Just because Keith thought that maybe there were hints of something... well, whatever it was, he was mistaken, and it’s...

“Fine,” he says.

“What time, sweetheart?”

“No, no, I...” he chokes. “I know you’re not interested. It’s fine, I just...I hear Coran calling me −” and he’s slamming the door closed behind him and trying to breathe as he presses his forehead against the cool metal, taking in the scene with his eyes closed.

Nyma is annoyed, Rolo uninterested, and Keith is...

Keith doesn’t know what he is, but his chest is aching in a way that has nothing to do with physical pain.

It figures. That not being able to read Lance would come back to bite him in the ass and make him think stupid, stupid, wrong things that he’d never even realized until now he’d thought. 

* * *

 

A quick, last-minute group text from Pidge not much later, a long overdue night of hanging out with the entirety of Lance’s friend group is scheduled for a few hours later − dinner at Hunk’s. Even Shiro and Allura can make it, and Matt says he’ll peel himself away from work for an hour or so.

Keith has spent the rest of the day trying and failing to focus. Lance has noticed, and has been trying to meet Keith’s gaze with worried eyes, looking for permission to help, but Keith tries his best to ignore it.

He’s taken, he’s taken, they’re friends, get over it.

“Hey,” Lance finally says, catching up to him as they start heading toward the car. “Hey, what’s up? Do you need...?”

He holds out a hand, but Keith folds his own hands beneath his arms, shaking his head and avoiding Lance’s eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t _seem_ fine. Should we call off tonight? They can hang out by themselves. If you’re not feeling well...”

“ _It’s fine_ ,” Keith snaps, and Lance recoils a little.

“All right then.”

The ride to Hunk’s house is in silence. 

* * *

 

Hunk’s house is modest, his parents welcoming and as bright and pleasant as he is, and then tactfully vanishing away to other parts of the house with Hunk’s baby sister after introductions. Keith makes an effort to shove down his feelings and tries to be civil, even attempting to force a smile. Hunk and Pidge seem to buy it, Hunk even giving Keith his own tight-squeeze-off-the-ground Hunk Hug and Pidge nudges him in the shoulder with a grin before Keith retreats to a chair in the very back of the living room.

It’s best to see Hunk and Pidge hovering around Lance, all three of them ramped up to heights Keith has never seen before. The trio on feel-good overdrive. They keep checking in with Lance throughout their high energy conversation, mostly subtly, and Keith thinks it would drive him up the wall, but Lance seems to be brimming with so much happiness that Keith can almost actually feel it.

Lance keeps on randomly latching onto one of the other two – wrapping arms around Hunk’s broad chest and laying his head against it, putting Pidge into a squawking, good-natured, laughing headlock. And Hunk and Pidge fill the room with complete and utter love, so much so that it makes Keith swallow and blink against burning eyes.

He wants that.

When Shiro and Allura arrive, it’s immediately clear to Keith that they, too, have been filled in on the Lance details, approaching the door with trepidation, pausing before they knock, sharing matching anxious worry.

But when Lance sweeps open the door to beam at the two of them, they smile back, relief flooding the room. It doesn’t stop a private hug from being exchanged and a quiet searching of Lance’s eyes from both of them, a few words Keith can’t hear from his chair to be murmured.

Lance turns with a grin dampened to a small smile, now solemn eyes, and as they catch Keith’s, the smile drops off his face completely in favor of a concerned studying of Keith.

Keith turns away like he’s listening to Hunk and Pidge chatter about the newest weird gadget they’re building together in their free time and watches the conversations go on around him in silence.

Matt stops by, gives everyone a hug – Lance, an extra-long one, and when he goes in for his sibling, Pidge ducks the grab and jumps on his back instead. He saves Keith for last, and murmurs, “You doing good, buddy?” in Keith’s ear. And of course Keith nods, and keeps his face as neutral as he can, and Matt isn’t completely convinced, but Hunk has to have him taste test the food before it’s served, and then he has to go.

It’s for the best. If anyone actually tried to make him talk, Keith isn’t sure how to explain how his insides are still whirling, hours later, how he is just barely managing keeping tabs on the whole house, but now, the idea of touching Lance prompts some kind of hurt behind his ribs.

So he doesn’t speak, and smiles along with everyone else, nodding, trying to fake it until maybe he can actually feel what everyone else in the room is absolutely filling him with. 

* * *

 

When dinner is finally declared to be done and they all seat themselves, Hunk serves them course after course with gusto. The room has gradually turned warm and sleepy and content, and people keep on making inside jokes and telling stories that has everyone laughing. Pidge is cackling about the time when they had pranked the entire school with – as far as Keith can tell – a bottle of ketchup, two bobby pins and approximately ninety frogs. Allura is tittering and Shiro is grinning, while Hunk supplies an endless stream of background giggles, and Lance has actually fallen off his chair from the hilarity of it and is rolling around, out of breath and kind of clutching at his leg and ribs.

Keith has let his face fall into a small smile at them all, and when Lance comes to a stop against his feet, looking up at him, he can’t hide it.

Lance’s eyes sparkle and suddenly he’s using Keith to pull himself to his feet, wrapping an arm around Keith’s shoulders to lean against him. “I think we’re ready for dessert, don’t you, roomie?”

Keith tenses at the fingers skimming his neck, and Lance pauses, pulling his hand away from skin. “Do you wanna go home?” he whispers.

Keith nods and _doesn’t look_ at Lance. Except he kind of does, when Lance turns back to the group: looks up at his grin, back again, bright blue eyes still dancing a little, and he shakes Keith’s shoulder a bit as he speaks. “All right, Keith’s tired, so we’re gonna grab some of that delicious pie I smelled Hunk baking and head.”

“Wait, but there’s ice cream and everything! I have to _prepare_ ,” Hunk cries, leaping up to make a beeline for the kitchen. Keith feels his stomach sink as everyone turns their attention to him in the meantime. He’s saved, but not in the way he’d like.

“Keith.” Shiro has risen, standing by the door to the back porch now. Purposeful, well-meaning. He nods outside. “Come sit with me?”

Keith translates that to _come talk to me_ , but he takes the way out.

Lance looks worried when he turns to close the door behind him and Shiro. Keith takes a deep breath and lets it click shut.

* * *

 

Shiro takes up residence in the poofy outdoor chair by the porch railing, looking up at stars scattered across the sky, and Keith hesitantly perches on the not-so-comfy wicker bench, staring at his feet.

“How have things been going?”

“Good.”

“You’re working now.”

“Yeah.”

Shiro looks at him. “And you and Lance seem like you’ve made friends.”

Keith doesn’t laugh bitterly. That would be dramatic. Instead, he presses his lips together. “Sure.”

“After the beach, I thought maybe I’d been a little naive to think you two would get along. I was a little worried, and for good reason, apparently. But I hear that...you helped him.

“I wanted to let you know that Allura and I have found a place we’re going to start moving into tomorrow. So you’re welcome to come move in.” The slip of paper with an address is pressed into Keith’s hand, and Keith looks down at it. Is this a way out? An escape?

He’s always pulling those, isn’t he?

“But where you are, right now? You’re doing well. Better than I thought you would.”

Keith inhales cool night air and wishes it would calm his lungs that feel too small for his body.

“I’m...I’m proud of you, Keith.”

And with that, he stops breathing for a good minute.

The tears don’t come immediately, but when they do, they’re thick and fast. He can’t hide the little gasps of air as he cries, and Shiro’s hand on his back is warm as it rubs soft circles.

Part of why Keith has never wanted this curse is feeling others’ deepest, most secret emotions when he just doesn’t want to know. Maybe that’s part of why he likes Lance so much. The secrets he tells Keith he tells because he wants to. Not because Keith has stolen them, an unwilling thief.

Shiro’s certainty of earlier is gone, and through his touch alone would feel comforting, his conflict and doubt whirl in Keith’s chest, a guilty mix as Shiro wonders what he should do. Because Keith doesn’t cry.

A knock at the door interrupts them, and Keith turns his wet face into the darkness, leaving Shiro to collect the two plates of marionberry pie and vanilla ice cream from Hunk himself.

Keith calms down, pressing the dessert-chilled spoon against his face, the pie gone in a few bites and his tears drying on his face.

They’re sitting in the silence, Shiro letting him be but wanting more from him, and Keith almost speaks.

Almost says, “I need help.” Almost, “I can’t do this.” _Almost_ , “I have to give up and I don’t know how. Please.”

But then the door creaks open again and it’s Lance to collect him, apologetic as Shiro sighs and gets up to give them both yet another hug.

Keith leaves without saying another word, feeling the presence at his back of the boy he really shouldn’t spend any more time with. The presence of the boy he really can’t stay away from. 

* * *

 

Mrs. McClain is waiting up for them when they get back, fussing about how it feels like she hasn’t even seen them at all while they’ve been working, she’s barely been able to talk to them and dinners, and now she doesn’t even have _that_ , and Lance sasses her that it’s not _his_ fault she made him start up working again, and she shakes her finger in his face even as she absently kisses his cheek goodnight.

And Keith wants that too, but when he gets her turning to him with a tired smile and offered open arms, he doesn’t know what to do. When she pecks him on the temple, it aches behind his eyes again, and he timidly returns her hug.

“ _Buenas noches_.”

“Y-you too,” he mumbles. When he pulls away, he notices Lance watching – because he’s always watching, and Keith feels self conscious about the half-visible tear tracks that are probably still on his face and noticeable by someone closely examining him, which Lance seems to be doing as his mother disappears towards her bedroom.

They’re climbing the stairs when Lance stops as if struck by something and turns to Keith with mischief in his eyes. “You know what would be fun?”

Keith tries not to hope. “What?”

“Checking out my parent’s not-so-secret-stash of alcohol.” He’s off down the stairs again before Keith can object or indulge himself in disappointment.

Lance’s room feels empty without him in it, and Keith sits on the bed and wishes that his air mattress wasn’t completely flattened. He doesn’t think he can deal with Lance being five inches away tonight.

Because, if he’s being honest with himself, this will never work out. He has no hope. Nyma’s right. Lance wouldn’t be interested. Not when he has her.

It doesn’t stop ill-fated hope from trying to flutter its way into his heart. Keith hates it, tries to quash it, knows it won’t come to anything. But this, this is what the weirdness was, he’ll acknowledge it, he’s into Lance and Lance is into someone else.

A pity it took seeing proof of his lack of chances to realize.

Keith falls back into the galaxy, and rolls over to trace stars, pressing his nose into pillows as he stares at the pattern – purple and blue and red, supernovas stretching across fabric.

The bottle drops onto the bedspread in front of him, and Lance bounces to a stop by his feet, crossing his good leg underneath him. Keith glances at the bottle – white rum – and then down with a raised eyebrow at Lance, who glares at him.

“Don’t look at me like that! My mama likes to make mojitos when no one’s around, it reminds her of Cuba, okay? And it’s not my fault she doesn’t hide it well.”

Lance picks up the bottle and visibly falters, face going uncertain. “I don’t think we, uh, have any soda or anything to mix it with, but...it’s fine!”

“Yeah,” Keith murmurs, taking the open bottle offered to him, slowly sipping. He nearly spits it all over Lance and has to swallow the absolutely foul liquid, burning warmth down his throat. “No!” he sputters.

“Come on, I’m sure it’s not that −” Lance actually sprays drops across Keith’s shirt and wipes his mouth, his face twisted. “Yeah, it is that bad,” he coughs. “I’ll find something.”

“I don’t want it,” Keith tries to say, but Lance has already gone, coming back with a pair of glasses and a coke he presents to Keith with a proud grin.

“Cuba Libre, eh?”

Keith is persuaded to take one more sip of his rum and coke before he gives it up and watches Lance shrug and take both.

He gets more loose as he drinks, shoving at Keith to “budge up” and make room for him to lie down against the pillows too. Halfway through the third glass, Keith’s locked in a lazy staring match with Lance, whose long fingers have started playing with the edge of the pillow near Keith’s cheek as he gazes at him. Keith’s heart is beating fast and even just the few sips and the fumes of the rum have him feeling a little warm under Lance’s eyes, seemingly staring directly into his soul.

“What’s going on?” he finally whispers, fingers stilling. His slightly slurred voice isn’t confrontational, but it also isn’t casual. Keith knows what he means.

“Nothing,” he tries, but Lance shakes his head, an uncontrolled motion, and his fingers slide further down the pillow, to a strand of black hair spread across it.

“I know you’re feeling bad. Come on.”

Fingertips, tracing tight lines of salt down his cheeks. Lance licks his lips and Keith prays to anyone listening – something he’s never done before, but now is the time to start.

“You can tell me. Keith.” He shifts closer, Keith digs his nails into his palms. Lance’s eyelashes are fluttering, like he’s having trouble keeping them open. “ _Querido_ ,” he rasps, “Talk to me.”

Keith doesn’t say anything, and blue eyes vanish behind eyelids, and Keith is left with the silent weight of everything, lying in Lance’s bed and he can’t, he can’t do it anymore.

He needs out. He should have gotten out a while ago. His head is bursting. He needs to leave, leave, leave.

He needs to just...go.

He leaves his jacket, leaves his shoes, simply steps out the back door and starts running, full-tilt, feeling the road beneath the pound of his feet.

He’ll be back. But he can’t stay here, sitting still with his mind whirling, staring at Lance.

He needs to run until he can’t think anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *oops i did it again plays faintly from another room*  
> my dudes my babes having an in-fucking-sane school and workload is terrible and the induced depression and resulting writer’s block for every single story i enjoy writing on my own time will be the fucking death of me....i wrote this when i should have been working on classwork but tbh i really don't like my profs at all & am not enjoying this program so there's that!!  
> plus another con is coming up so there goes the rest of my nonexistent free time  
> will try to update soon because i actually want to do things i have fun doing for once but wHO FUCKIN KNOWS WITH MY SCHEDULE  
> thank much for all the lovely wonderful comments i will reply soon ;_; i luv u  
> #pray4kay


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit have another chapter and two oneshots ur fuckin welcome i’m gonna go die now  
> this episode of Angst Central was brought to you by [Jon Bellion’s Guillotine](%E2%80%9D)  
> listen when the two rival space boys are fighting

It’s light outside now, later even than he’d thought, and his legs are aching, his lungs burning with each breath, each intake of oxygen a knife in his ribs. The morning sunlight has to filter through a damp, misty fog and he can’t really breathe or feel his limbs for the cold, cold time he’s been out. But he’s back. Collapsing against the side of the house because he can barely stand anymore, Keith rests his forehead against a knee.

He just needs a minute. A moment, to compose himself, to wallow in the physical pain that’s real, that isn’t in his head from someone else, that isn’t his heart doing ridiculous things without his permission, no, this pain is tangible and he did it himself, it was his choice, his actions. He ran until his head was crystal clear, and that means he can get over his silly little thing he thought he had for Lance, right? He can figure out all these twisted around thoughts and feelings and...

“Keith!”

Keith looks up from his knees. His chest is still heaving, he can feel sweat soaking through his clothes, matting his hair. He’s shivering now, though, the sweat turned ice cold a while ago. He sweeps the hair out of his face to look up at Lance, who looks uncharacteristically pale.

But Keith doesn’t expect Lance’s hand to slam into his chest, pinning him against the wall, his blue eyes blazing. He looks like hell, Keith registers, all eye bags and messy hair, freckles standing out in sharp relief.

“What the hell, Keith? I thought you just...left! Everyone was looking for you! For hours! Where did you _go_? _Jesus!_ ”

“I...a run...I went running.”

“You freaked my mom out, Rafael was crying, I was...”

The words tumbling out of Lance’s mouth dribble to a stop. His face is still almost gray, and – weakly this time – he shoves Keith into the wall again, his eyes focused on his own fingers. “Have you been out here? How long? Where the hell is your jacket? Your shoes? God.”

“N-not long. I don’t...”

Lance stands, shucking off his own jacket in a single, sharp movement and tugging it around Keith’s shoulders. He turns, scrunching his hands in his already-sticking-straight-up hair, hiding his expression from Keith’s view. When he turns back around, his face is set. He points decisively at Keith. “Okay, new rule. You go out by yourself, write a note or something. Take the key.” Lance turns to grab a rock sitting in the flowerpot on the porch to brandish the key hiding beneath at Keith. “Listen, take the spare key with you and we’ll know you didn’t just run off, and we won’t have to get everyone into a frenzy, find out from Shiro this is your M.O. −”

“Shiro told you?” Keith’s breath has returned to his lungs, and now he’s shooting to his feet. Lance has figured some things out on his own, but Keith’s past has always been his own story to tell. Shiro knows it. Not all of it, but enough. And now...now Lance knows?

Lance’s breathless laugh is harsh. “Yeah, you’d just _vanished_ , so of course I was calling everyone to figure out where you were. We _care about you_! _I_ care about you, and I thought you’d just... _left_!”

Keith feels even colder. He clutches the edges of the jacket draped around his shoulders closer. His heart is pounding in his throat, painful and hard. “Yeah, you care about me? I missed the memo where you’d still rather ‘talk’ to Nyma and not even tell me about it, though, huh?”

Lance’s eyebrows jump.

“Guess I just read into things that weren’t there. You care more about her?”

Lance’s face is all fire and confusion now. “What?! I just...we were just...Nyma was never anything, Keith! _You_ were the one I bared my goddamn heart and soul to, I told you shit my best friend in the world hadn’t even known, and you won’t speak a word to me about any of your past! When we’re...”

“That’s _my life_ , it’s not yours to just _nose into_!”

“Well, I let you nose into mine, and this isn’t giving only, buddy! Give and take, equal sharing of skeletons in the closet. I thought we were _close_!”

“ _If I shared my skeletons with you, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me!_ ”

It hurts.

But Lance shuts up.

“You wanna know, though, Lance? You want to dig up all the bones and hear all the gory stories? Fine. Fine! Fuck.”

“Keith.” Lance’s expression has fallen into something pleading. “Please, god, I’m sorry, I just – _please_ , tell me. _Talk_ to me.”

Keith is clutching his head. “Why don’t I have parents, Lance, huh, do you wonder? Why am I so goddamn _weird_ , with my aversion to people and my being able to know where someone is without seeing or hearing them? All wrapped up in one neat little package, straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Lance is scared now, Keith can see it in the reflection of the early morning light in his eyes. He isn’t sure he wants these answers anymore.

Well, he asked for them.

“I don’t have parents because they dropped me off. Just left me, because I’m weird. Couldn’t handle the perceptive little kid with eyes that saw too much. They were pissed at me, because they were scared. So fucking terrified of me.” He laughs, but it’s wild, high-pitched, breaking. Lance flinches.

“See, they knew what you don’t, what nobody does anymore, because I can’t tell anybody, or they’d just leave too. Maybe worse.”

It’s ripping a hole in him, speaking these secrets that have kept him stitched together over these long years, words he’s vowed he will never say to another living being.

“Doesn’t it ever seem like I can read minds? Read people? Because I _can_ , Lance, I can get up real close and personal and I can tell _exactly_ what people are feeling. It doesn’t matter how good of a liar they are, Lance, because I feel exactly what they are, I can sense everyone in a room and hear everything they’re feeling. It’s some kind of fucking magic that doesn’t care whether I want it or not, whether its target wants me to read them or not, I just feel _everything_ and it _doesn’t stop_ , it doesn’t _shut up_. I force my way into every single person’s head I come across and _I can’t shut it off._ ”

Lance’s fists are pressed to his mouth, his eyes wide. It doesn’t matter that Keith can’t hear him, he knows he’s a breath away from falling back a shaky step, in shock.

In fear.

Fear of the freak.

“Except for _you_.” And Keith pauses, and Lance pauses, and then he starts shaking his head, and he takes that step backwards and Keith follows him, leaving the painful tear in his chest to split more, to ache. This pain is in his head, like always, he’s lost the clarity of his purposeful inflicting of soreness and hurt somewhere around the wrapping of a green jacket around his shoulders.

“I can’t tell with you. You’re the only one. I never know what you’re feeling. You’re blank, empty space, and when I touch you...” Keith swallows. “It all goes away. I’m...I’m _normal_. You shut it all off.”

Lance backs into the wall, and Keith bites back a shaky breath, but now it’s started, the floodgates are open and he can’t stop. “And you’re the...the first one I’ve told. Not even Matt, or Shiro, they didn’t know. Not really. Because I promised myself I’d never tell anybody, because I know what happens when people figure it out. But you − you let me forget that I was a freak. And it felt like...I don’t know. You were important, to me, and I was maybe important to you. We were...we were almost...whatever. And I realized I’d probably just dreamed half of it up, so... So I just needed to figure it out. And I went for a run. And that’s all.”

And Lance doesn’t respond, just stands there staring at him.

So Keith clenches shaking hands and slowly, quietly walks past, opens the door to grab his shoes, to pull onto freezing feet, takes one more deep breath and turns back to look at the rock in the flower pot.

It’s not his key to take. He isn’t coming back now.

So he looks at Lance, one more time.

“Goodbye, Lance.”

Lance’s eyes flicker up to him from where they’d been affixed to the ground, and he opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

Keith presses his lips together to force back an inhalation that might sound dangerously like a sob, spinning on his heel.

Shiro’s address burns in his pocket as he walks away from the house, through the fog. And if the dampness on his face isn’t just from the weather, if after a few minutes of walking he glances over his shoulder and can’t see Lance’s big bright house anymore and he kind of chokes on nothing, he won’t acknowledge it.

It’s not until a good while later that he realizes he still has Lance’s jacket.

He wraps his arms around it, around himself, and hugs himself, tugging the edges of cloth and zipper as tight as he can, branding the skin of his palms red with its indentations, crying a little as he pulls the hood up.

Or maybe a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello my darlings!! FINALLY i can post [the emo backstory to keith! i wrote this ages ago, so have it!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12301911)  
> ANDDDDDD have this [lance being gay 4 keef fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12301881) too so that you can feel better about all this angst!! set during last chap!  
> BOI I’M SPOILIN Y’ALL WITH ALL THIS CONTENT WHEN I’M ACTUALLY TRASH AT PRODUCING IT ON A REGULAR SCHEDULE BUT THERE IT IS  
> *doesn’t update anything for another year now*  
> 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa it’s been a month yike see link at the final end notes for why soz babes  
> EDIT: adding [this new oneshot](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12808395) because idk it's a good place to know how Shiro and Matt met Keith?? I wrote the beginning of this chapter with the context of their first meeting in mind...but it can really be read at any point

It’s apt that he runs back to Shiro a complete and utter mess, showing up on his doorstep in the same state he had years and years ago, freezing and broken in the early hours of the morning.

He hopes he won’t be mad.

What if he is? Keith can’t handle another rejection. He’d been doing so well, Shiro had said, what if his stupidity had cost him more than simply Lance?

That’s also stupid, isn’t it? Keith’s mind is a mess, his face wet and burning, eyes, throat painful. Shiro wouldn’t...would he?

But he’d thought Lance wouldn’t...

No, no, he can’t think, he has to stop thinking. The breaths he’s gasping hurt his lungs, but he hasn’t been running anymore, stumbling instead, clutching with trembling fingers at fabric.

Caring hurts. Finding people to tear himself open for, only to have them toss him away again.

He should have known, he’s known for a while, he should have known better. He supposes he’d forgotten this terrible, gaping hurt by someone else’s hand – someone’s hand withdrawing.

It’s the flash of this idea that drags his feet on the front steps of the quaint, tiny house with two recognizable cars in the driveway, slows his fist on the door.

He stares at the sign under his knuckles – black and purple, speckled with white – _No place in the universe like home._

Home, home, home.

He can feel them, a sleepy pair, inside their home, _belonging_ together. Belonging in this place.

Lance, belonging in that house with Rafael and Mari and Gavin and Gwen and his...his parents. His mother.

His hand falls on the wood, without much conviction, a cry for help that came from within him without his consent.

Shiro starts for the door, slight confusion and a hint of worry. Allura, tired, too tired to move. Keith, stuck frozen on the doorstep, trying to back away, run, but the door is clicking, swinging open.

Shiro’s fear comes to a head as soon as his eyes meet Keith’s. They widen, immediate regret, fear exploding.

“ _Keith_.”

“Can I stay? Please?” Keith blurts, through breaths thick with tears. His hair is plastered to his forehead, his thin shoes wet through from walking through grass, toes frozen, his nose cold.

He has to look like a mess, which must be why, after another beat of conflicted concern, Shiro reaches to tug him in. Keith stiffens in the hug, the first sob erupts into Shiro’s chest, and he’s pulled into the house as the door shuts behind them. 

* * *

 

“I have to call,” Shiro finally says after he and Allura have fussed for a while, covering Keith in blankets, turning up the heat, Allura making him not one, not two, but three consecutive cups of tea.

“No,” Keith mumbles immediately, reaching to clutch a handful of shirt, to tug Shiro back. “No, please.”

His voice breaks, pitifully, and Shiro hears it in a flood of mixed emotion.

“I have to tell Maria, Keith. When she talked to me this morning, she was worried sick. Whatever happened, you owe it to her to let her know where you are.”

 _Maria_ , Keith’s brain repeats foggily. Maria. Mrs. McClain. Was worried?

“We can call Lance, he was absolutely frantic −”

“NO!” He’d shouted it, and Shiro _knows_ , he doesn’t know details, but he knows.

“I...I can’t...don’t call him.”

“All right.” Quiet. “I’ll call Maria directly, then. You don’t have to do anything. Just sleep, Keith.”

A stroke of his hair, and Allura guides him down onto the spare bed, into the nest of blankets they’d made for him, and Keith sleeps and thinks maybe he’s dreaming he’s in Lance’s head for a while. But later, when he wakes up, he can’t remember a thing. 

* * *

 

* * *

 

_Lance paces the room like a caged animal, his brain won’t stop going, running, a mile a minute, his crutches clicking across the floor. He’s tried to sit, he can’t._

_It makes sense, honestly, this explanation, Lance had never dreamed up anything that connected each dot perfectly._

_But it can’t be real. It can’t. If it is, to Keith, is he crazy? But he can’t be._

_How can Lance be the ONE person that Keith can’t read the mind of? Isn’t that convenient. No way to prove it if Keith can’t tell him what he’s thinking._

_How could Keith not tell him? They_ were _close, but he’d never even..._

_That’s not fair, Lance thinks, because Keith had told him why he’d never said anything. And here Lance was, proving him right. Like every other person he’d confided in._

_He wanders down the stairs like he’s in a dream, and Rafael’s still sitting in Gwen’s lap, hiccupping slightly. His tears have long dried, but only because he’s out of them. Lance pauses at the foot of the stairs. Gwen’s mouth is pulled down. Mari had been ushered back to bed, but not before she, too, had put up a screaming, slightly tearful fight. Even Gavin had looked worried when he’d appeared in their parents’ doorway when Lance had woken them up. Because Keith was gone without a trace._

_Gwen looks up at him now, a sparkle of hope in her eyes._

_Lance can’t say anything to her, because Keith came home, but then he sent Keith away again. He looks away._

_He can hear his mama in the kitchen on the phone. He drifts towards her. He feels kind of sick, sick in an I-think-I-fucked-up-and-I-don’t-know-what-to-do kind of way._

_“Thank you so much, Shiro.” She sounds weepy, her accent stronger than ever through her tears. “I am...I’m glad that he is safe, at least. Please tell Keith...we miss him.”_

_He’s with Shiro. Of course he’s with Shiro. Where else would he go? He doesn’t trust anyone else._

_He doesn’t trust Lance anymore._

_His mama puts down the phone and covers her face with her hands. She shakes a little. He goes to her._

_She hears his crutches, and hastily wipes at her face, turning to intercept him with a hug he was hoping to give her. “He is all right. He’s at Shiro’s. Shiro said that...he thinks it would be better if...we stayed here for a while. And didn’t see him.”_

_Lance breathes._

_She sniffles. “Today reminds me of the times when you would disappear. Always running away, so headstrong. You would worry me so much.”_

_“Mama...?”_

_“_ Sí _?”_

_“Do I...do I disappoint you?”_

_She pulls back, shock stamped across her face._ “ _No,_ cariño _, of course not!”_

 _“I’m – I’m not as good at anything as anyone else is. You aren’t worried that I’ll just grow up to be some_ hombre perezoso, bueno para nada _?”_

 _“I worried about what you were feeling. Lance.” She caresses his hair, presses a gentle kiss to his forehead. “I worry about_ you _.”_

_“Mama.” He presses his face into her shoulder. “I think I screwed up. More than usual.”_

_“How?”_

_“With Keith, I said some things...or, I_ didn’t _say some things. He’s helped me, so much. And I, I care about him. But I just...let him walk away. I don’t know what to do.”_

 _“Well then...maybe you should walk after him,_ mijo _."_

* * *

* * *

 

Keith wakes up feeling out of sorts, a tired ache pounding at his head. He can’t recall where he is, what happened, he just knows something is _wrong_. Where’s Lance?

Footsteps, Keith feels careful, quiet attention. Shiro peers around the corner, and Keith remembers, and he pulls a quilt back over his head, because he thinks he might want to cry some more, a lump working its way back up in his throat and his sore eyes burning again.

Shiro lays a hand on top of the lump of blankets that is Keith, and Keith wishes that he could actually absorb feelings of strength and support. Shiro has them in spades right now.

“It’s dinnertime, if you’re hungry.”

_Not really._

“I’ll leave you a tray, then,” Shiro says eventually when Keith doesn’t respond.

He drifts in and out of sleeping and waking after that, until his stomach can’t take it anymore, and he sits up to stare at the cold chicken soup and biscuits sitting on the side table. He eats it, cleans the bowl, is still hungry, and tries to sleep again.

It’s late, dark outside. Shiro and Allura went to bed hours ago. Keith effectively reversed his sleep schedule with that night of running and day of sleeping. So when the first knock at the front door reaches his ears, it makes sense that he should probably open it.

It isn’t his house, though.

After a pause, the knock comes again, louder, and again, until it’s a pounding, continuous and insistent. Keith creeps towards the door.

He shouldn’t answer it, but he doesn’t want Shiro and Allura to have to wake up in the middle of the night for whoever the hell this is. He’ll open it and tell the pounder to go away.

Except Keith almost slams it closed again without even speaking when Lance’s frantic eyes meet his on the other side. He should have known. He should have noticed.

“Ah, wait, Keith, shit! Fuck, please don’t!” Lance stiff-arms the door, shoving back against Keith’s forceful attempt to close it again.

“What are you doing here?” Keith hisses, shoving too.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I fucked up, please!”

He stops, clenching the doorknob in a fist, and Lance stops pushing, staring apprehensively at him.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats quietly, holding out his hands, pleadingly. “Can I...come in?”

“Fine.” Keith whirls and heads back toward his bedroom, leaving Lance to shut the door behind him and follow.

He seats himself on the bed, watching Lance through warily narrowed eyes as he steps through the doorway, looking around. He quietly closes the door and hovers some feet from the bed, nervously shifting. Finally he turns to Keith, abruptly yanking a tin out of his pocket and holding it out. “Do you want a mint?”

“What? No.” Keith blinks as Lance pops one into his own mouth, his jaw working as his eyes dart around the room again, not meeting Keith’s. His fingers flutter over his crutch handles, his nails tapping, clicking. He’s trembling, a little, Keith doesn’t know whether it’s cold, or nerves, or fear. It could be all.

“Um, so...” Lance finally begins. “I fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Keith says slowly.

“I really fucked up, so...I’m sorry? I shouldn’t have...I should have said stuff. I shouldn’t have frozen you out.”

“Yeah,” Keith repeats. They’re playing the echo game. Keith doesn’t know what he wants from Lance, but this isn’t it.

“God, dude, can you...I shouldn’t ask for anything right now, really, but...can you just come home? I was...I was trying to talk myself into coming here all day, and I... I can’t think right now.”

 _All day, trying to get up the courage to try to talk to the freak._ Keith feels cold. “This is home for me now.”

“What?” Lance’s movement stops.

Keith straightens his spine and pushes on. Painless, careless words.

“Shiro said I could stay here. So I am.”

“Y-you’re _staying_ with Shiro?” Lance laughs disbelievingly. “Keith, he doesn’t even _know_ about you!”

Pretending not to care isn’t working. Keith’s hackles are rising. “And he doesn’t care, he doesn’t push me, he doesn’t make me tell him all my secrets!”

“I didn’t make you do anything!”

“Yes, you did!”

“Keith, I swear to god −”

“Shut the fuck up!” Keith jumps up to muffle Lance’s voice, which is approaching a shout. Shiro and Allura are asleep, and he’s going to wake them up, and then Keith will be even more fucked than he already is. “Shut up, shut up, shut −”

He shudders as the house’s occupant’s heads silence themselves as his fingers clench over Lance’s mouth, losing track of himself for a moment, but he’s back, and Lance is looking at him weirdly above his hands. Not struggling, not angry anymore, just...looking.

Keith removes his hands, stepping back, letting it all rush in again, trying to read Lance, struggling to figure it out.

Lance’s gaze drifts – it’s meeting his, it’s tracing Keith’s face, stuttering to a stop at what almost seems like his mouth for the briefest of moments, then down to Keith’s hand. He steps forward again to take Keith’s hand and look up once more, to watch him. A hint of apology in his face, but so, so much more that Keith just...can’t read.

“What are you feeling?” Keith whispers, feeling lost. Lost without the chatter, lost without the custom accompaniment of someone else’s feelings in the room, lost without the certainty of knowing what exactly this person was thinking. Lost in a sea of blue.

“W-what are _you_ feeling?” Lance murmurs back, looking flushed under his smattering of freckles. He, too, searches Keith’s eyes. Keith feels an urge to cover them, to look away, to hide himself, but he can’t.

“I don’t...”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“I don’t want to either.” A whispered admission.

“What if you don’t?” Lance murmurs. He’s so close. The words aren’t voiced, just a breath of air between them.

“But...you’re...scared of me, aren’t you? Aren’t you disgusted?” He doesn’t even know if Lance can hear the faintest whisper as he watches Lance’s eyes flicker from his lips back to meet his eyes, slightly softened, slightly sorry.

“Keith. Of you? Never.”

And they’re caught, staring at each other, eyes searching eyes, Keith exhales a shaky breath, eyelids fluttering closed − and leans in the rest of the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOOOOOOOOOOOoops  
> Did i cut it too early accidentally oooooooooooooops  
> (ʃƪ¬‿¬)  
> (don’t worry i will update again somewhat soon i promise, much, much sooner than a month i definitely promise)  
> and fyi main fic is ending kinda soon but there will be another multichaptered part two!!  
> -  
> [also....here’s a gory + eventually smutty klance zombie apocalypse au that i started for halloween and feedback would be p darn cool my dudes!!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12580576)


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT IS THIS QUICK ASS UPDATE???  
> no more trollin or angst....for now.  
> (⌐■_■)/ here’s the goods y'all wanted, this chapter is literally just fluff, just good shit, lots of *ahem* makin out...sorry to my fellow angst babes we needed a break  
> this......this isn’t a smutty fic.....shit um..... *sweats, flips through papers frantically* goddamn keith was pushin for it to be tho my dudes  
> (Ps.............if y'all wanna......draw any art.....whatsoever...of any scene in this fic......i'd fuckin die and love u forever.....js............)

Lance’s lips are soft against Keith’s chapped ones, he tastes like the mint he’d offered, cool, wintery, stinging Keith’s mouth in a way that makes his toes curl. He’s burning up even as Lance’s kiss freezes him.

“Please,” Lance murmurs against his skin, and Keith shudders as Lance tugs him closer, fingers digging delicately into his spine, and it’s all quiet and still as Keith loses himself in Lance and Lance’s hand comes up to oh-so-gently cup his jaw. And everything is just Lance and it’s perfect.

Only Lance is trying to balance on crutches he’s let go of, and he starts to topple over with a curse, and Keith has to catch him, but now he’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe, and Lance is snickering into his shirt as Keith pulls him down to sit safely on the bed.

“I’m smooth!” Lance protests.

“Like crunchy peanut butter.” Keith tucks Lance’s bangs out of his face and grins, and Lance narrows his eyes at him, a wry smile curling his own mouth as he reaches out to pull Keith in again.

“Shut up,” he mumbles, and Keith does, because it’s very easy to forget about everything but Lance’s mouth when it’s on his.

And they’re kind of wrapping themselves up in each other, a mess of limbs, Keith’s arms curling around Lance’s neck, Lance’s, around Keith’s hips. But it’s not close enough, Keith wants more, pushing nearer, following and humming a pleased noise as Lance slowly scoots himself backwards until he hits the wall, and Keith can carefully straddle his hips, can enjoy the hitch in his breath as Lance’s hands ball up in –

“You’re still wearing my jacket,” Lance breaks away to mutter, his forehead bumping against Keith’s.

“Yeah,” Keith breathes, chasing Lance’s lips again, unsure what this has to do with anything, and, to be honest, not really caring, not when they could be occupied with something else.

“Hey, I’m sorry.” Lance looks up at him, hazy seriousness permeating his eyes. Keith is still kind of lost, and it takes him a moment to hear the words. His fingers, that have worked themselves into the hair at the nape of Lance’s neck, tighten.

“For what?”

“I pushed you so hard to tell me, and you did, and then I just...let you leave. Without saying anything. Yet, here you are...” He pulls the hem of the jacket through his fingers, staring at it. “Wearing this.”

“And kissing you.”

“Yeah.” Gaze back up, a little wondering. Hands coming to rest at the small of Keith’s back. “I don’t even know how...”

Keith has to ask it, even if he’s never felt more secure, held here in Lance’s arms. “Would you rather be kissing Nyma, though?”

“ _Fuck_ no.” Lance’s grip tightens, drawing him in, propping his chin on Keith’s chest to look up at him. Looking tired. “You saw, then.”

“Why not her?”

“Maybe because I’d really rather not kiss somebody as a distraction til they find their newest boyfriend. Maybe because I’d really rather not kiss _Nyma_.” Blue darkens as it searches his gray. “Maybe because I’ve really, really wanted to kiss you. For a while. A lot.”

“Me too,” Keith whispers. “It’s okay, Lance. And I’m sorry, too. For, for running, and not telling you, and just... just springing that on you. And not letting you think about it. Just expecting the worst from you.”

Lance cranes upward, intention in the line of his neck, in his look to Keith’s mouth, and Keith kisses him again, and Lance sighs, lining their noses up to brush, and they’re both going cross-eyed staring at each other, catching small smiles from each other, sharing them.

“So...you’re magic, huh?”

Now Keith is pulling back a little, a slight grimace overtaking his face, but Lance’s hand wrapping around the back of his neck won’t let him. “I guess I already knew that. There’s no other way anybody could pull off a mullet and look as hot as you do.”

Keith exhales a startled laugh, and Lance is grinning. And that’s a pin in that discussion, for tonight, they can both feel it, but they can talk about it later. Tomorrow, next week. Next month, even. It isn’t a terrible, giant chasm of a secret between them anymore, and no one’s angry or scared. There’s no rush.

There is, however, a pause before Lance pulls back again, letting out a sigh. “I should probably...go home?”

Keith draws back too. “Oh.”

“It’s really late...” Puppy dog eyes.

“Yeah.”

“My mama will probably yell at me for waking her up...”

“Okay.”

“I have to drive all the way back....” Whining.

“Huh.”

Nobody has moved.

“It _is_ really late.” Keith licks his lips. Lance follows the movement.

Dazed. “Yep.”

“And you’d have to drive.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And if you’d wake up your mom coming in... Maybe...you should just stay here for the night.”

Lance slumps against him, a relieved, mischievous grin curling across his face. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Keith smirks down at him and settles himself even more comfortably, leaning to kiss and nip at Lance’s lips approvingly. Lance whimpers, hands coming up to grip at Keith’s shoulders and push him away.

“Listen, you can’t _do_ that after asking me to stay the night. That’s just not _fair_.”

Keith stares at him, bemused. “Why?”

“Because it’s hot, and I really shouldn’t...no. No, Keith. _No!_ ” It turns into a despairing moan.

Keith’s fingers have found the hem of Lance’s shirt, and he’s toying with it now, raising an eyebrow, tongue between his teeth. “Maybe you should take this off?”

“ _Keith!_ ”

“Yes?” he asks innocently as he bends to press his lips to Lance’s neck, but Lance ducks away, his own eyes dancing as he extracts Keith’s arms and legs from their clamped position around him, firmly dropping him into the pillows at the head of the bed instead.

“I don’t know what kind of girl you take me for...getting all hot and heavy before the first date? In a guest bed in _Shiro’s_ house? What would our hosts think?” The scandalized southern belle voice does Keith in, and he presses his face into the pillow to muffle his cackling laughter. He feels Lance settle against the pillow next to him and rolls over to see the giant grin, flash of white teeth.

He returns it. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s smiled so wide. “Okay, sorry, purely platonic bedsharing. Hands off.”

But arms snake around him. “Hey, I didn’t say that. Not... _all_ the way off.” Breath ghosting over his lips as Lance leans closer, and Keith happily accepts the kiss with a contented noise. Still minty. Which reminds him...

“What was that mint thing you offered to me, even?”

Lance, whose head has dropped to Keith’s collarbone, chuckles against his skin, a warm puff. “Icebreaker.”

Keith can’t stop a snicker. “You tried to make a dumb joke in _that_ atmosphere? Seriously? Why do I even like you, you idiot?”

Lance’s hold tightens. “Say that one more time?”

“‘You idiot’?”

“Oh my god. No, Mulletface.”

“I’m not saying it if you call me that.”

“Say it, Keith.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “‘Why do I even like you’?”

“Ah. Because I’m that good at sucking face, I guess.” Lance smirks into Keith’s mouth as he captures Keith’s lips again.

He’s right, he is good, Keith supposes as he allows himself to be swept away in Lance’s kisses. But Keith’ll never _say_ that.

“Thank you,” he does whisper into the darkness, into Lance’s hair, after the kisses have turned lazy and drowsy and then ceased, after Lance has snuggled into him and his breathing has evened out. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

And he presses one final kiss to the crown of Lance’s head and ignores the tear sliding down his cheek and onto the pillow. It’s good, this time. It’s his throat tightening and his chest bursting with something that isn’t pain, something that’s so wonderfully relieving and happy and...and loving.

“Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me start off by saying that between greenteafiend, ZeynepD, and imapirahana98’s comments last chapter, i was fuckin crying... like they all, one after the other, wrote these giant painstaking comments ANALYZING all of this goddamn fic and talking so lovingly about the characters in this au and tbfh?? you have all of them to thank for this showing up so quickly after the last chapter because they made maybe my fuckin year??  
> that shit was so good like i will reread these comments again and again and cry each time that you guys care so much about this trash i write thank u so so so much darlings ;;_;;  
> -  
> anyway.....shameless references to those lion elements in that kiss scene bro ;) can you tell with how goddamn touchy feely this chapter was that i am v v lonely and just want some romantic cuddles..................  
> approachin the end of part one!! ....hooooo boy i should probably you know outline and actually put up a final chapter count? that would be a good idea....will i do that??? probably not lol

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT (9/25): This has been on hiatus FOR WAY TOO LONG ahhh ;;o_o sorry y'all i love this fic i promise & i plan to finish it at some point (like asap!) but i also have a v important fic i'm tryin to finish rn!!  
> did u know.....that i am working on some [angsty dad!lance & extra-emo!keith klance over here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16023596) as part of the 2018 klance big bang (which means there's BEAUTIFUL ART involved!) and i have a deep attachment to this fic??? well now u do so if it's ur thing u can....check it out.... *insert wiggling eyebrows here* if it's not, continue on w/ ur life my dude & have a gr8 day!!  
> -  
> HEYOOO if you wanna be an absolute sweetheart and support me and this fic in a completely free way you can [reblog this post right here](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/post/162041546673/all-the-voices-seem-to-fade-when-you-are-here)! Or feel free to share this trash with your friends! My dudes any form of spreading my work to others is the best fuckin thing lemme tell ya!!  
> -  
> please comment dear lord omfg i cry happily w/ each comment i get  
> [ATV content: aka voltron art & cosplay stuff i've done that may or may not have to do with the fic but](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/tagged/atv-content)  
> [my creative tumblr](http://kayizcray.tumblr.com) | [my personal tumblr](http://ihaveacleverfandomurl.tumblr.com/) | ([& my cosplay instagram](https://www.instagram.com/kayizcray/))  
> FIC TAG: "fic: atvmain"  
> 


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